Through The Storm
by LadyCara
Summary: On Darlig Ulv Stranden, Rose had promised herself that she would have a fantastic life, and she desperately hoped that her leather-clad Doctor would do the same, until they met again. Back in the original universe, the Doctor finds a redhead in a wedding dress in his TARDIS. A Nine/Rose Doomsday AU set in the same universe as Wings of Gold, with Donna along for the ride.
1. Prologue

I'm probably insane, but the plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone...

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

**Canary Wharf, 2007.**

One last flash of vivid blue against black, one endless look into a face dominated by hazelnut-brown eyes that conveyed more fear than they had in front of the entire Dalek fleet, then she was gone. The gaping wound in the fabric of time and space closed, the pull died down. All that remained was a white wall and ringing silence.

The Doctor slowly loosened his grip on the magna-clamp, almost having to force his fingers open. Without even knowing that he had moved he found himself standing in front of the wall, staring at the concrete as if he could bring the barrier between universes down with sheer force of will. Eventually he raised his hand and touched the wall tentatively, as if feeling the solid concrete under his fingers would finally make real what he didn't want to believe. She was gone.

The leather of his jacket scraped over the concrete when he leant against the wall, his forehead resting against the smooth surface. He could almost imagine that he could feel her warmth, as if the Void was nothing more than a veil he could pull aside. Almost.

He lost track of how long he stood there. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Except that she was gone.

~o~o~o~

After some time he became aware of his surroundings again. He straightened, closed his eyes for a brief second, touched the wall for the last time and left the lever room without looking back. There were two things left to do, and then he could go and let trouble find him. He felt empty. It had been her smiles, her hand in his, that had let him finally realise that the universe was still beautiful and that it was worth the fight. But without her everything looked as if it was covered in ashes, the air so thick he could hardly breathe.

The Doctor reached the basement without encountering anybody. The building seemed to be completely empty, which was just as well. No need to wait until it was dark or to warn anyone before he carried out what he should have done hours before. At least Torchwood wouldn't have the chance to destroy even more lives beyond those the Cybermen had already taken.

He was following the corridor that led to the storage room where Yvonne Hartman had stored the TARDIS when he heard a male voice and the sound of rubber wheels on linoleum. He slipped into a room and closed the door behind him. Not that he really worried about what might happen to him, not anymore, but there were certainly deaths that were more worthwhile than ending up as a guinea pig for Torchwood's scientists. Besides, blowing up Torchwood Tower would probably a bit of a problem if he was imprisoned. And she deserved at least a proper goodbye. Hell, she deserved the entire universe, and he would have given it to her if he'd had the chance.

"Shhh, love, don't worry. We'll find a way. I promise," the person on the other side of the door said in a Welsh accent, the words barely louder than a whisper. The rest of his words were lost in the sound of the wheels of a gurney on the floor.

Thirty seconds later the Doctor left the room and continued his way to the storage area. He was mentally cataloguing his supply in explosives and the weak points in the structural integrity of the building, when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

_We'll find a way. I promise._

She had used almost the same words, almost eighteen months ago in a dark alley in Carthage.

_We will be separated once. But we will see each other again. We will find a way. I promise._

She had known. He clung to the words as if they were a lifeline. She had sounded so secure, so convinced.

_I promise._

He would see her again. He didn't even think about doubting her. If there was one person in the entire universe he believed in, it was her. Any version of her. A tiny spark of hope ignited in his hearts. He didn't know when, he didn't know how long it would take them, but they would see each other again. The universe owed them that much.

**A windy beach in Norway, 2007.**

A group of people gathered next to a battered jeep, something nobody would have considered an appropriate car for its owner, billionaire Pete Tyler. A young blonde woman emerged from the group and brought some distance between herself and her family. She waited silently, her wind-swept hair the only indicator that she wasn't a statue. She closed her eyes, paused for a few seconds and opened them again.

A ghost-like figure in a black leather jacket and with piercing blue eyes had appeared in front of her. The expression on his face confirmed what she had been suspecting since he had first called her in her dreams.

"Rose."

"Doctor," she said, a forced smile on her face. "This isn't fair. Whenever we have to say goodbye, you're just a hologram. For a Time Lord, you've got really awful timing."

"Yep, that's me. No timing at all." Rose would have believed manic smile on his face had it not been for the desperate look in his eyes.

"Where are you?"

"In the TARDIS. Orbiting a pulsar. The radiation enables the TARDIS to send this projection across the void. But we've only got a few minutes. This is the last hole between the universes and it'll close soon."

"Is there... Can you..."

"I don't know," he answered her unspoken question, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Would you?"

"Yes." One syllable, just three letters, spoken matter-of-factly in a harsh Northern accent, but somehow more convincing and reassuring than any copious declaration would have been.

For a few seconds they were silent. So many unsaid things lingered between them.

"Doctor," Rose took a deep breath, begging every deity in the universe that might be listening for courage. She wouldn't break down now. "I love you." Her eyes shone with tears, but her voice was strong. She took another breath and tried to keep her voice from wavering. There was something else she had to tell him, for his sake. Without someone to care for, someone to keep him going, he would only sink back into the desperation that had been his constant companion when she had first met him. So she pressed, "Promise me that you'll find someone to travel with. Promise me."

"Oh, Rose." She hadn't heard this voice since Van Statten's bunker, and even then he hadn't sounded so devastated. "I love you." He had said it, Rose realised with a shock. "You are my life and my soul. You saved my life in more ways than you can imagine. This is not goodbye. We're gonna see each other again. Will you bond with me?"

"But..."

"We're gonna see each other again," he repeated, still sounding as if he was trying to convince her as much as himself. "I know it. Y... someone told me, eighteen months ago. I love you. So will you bond with me?"

Rose wiped her eyes and a smile began to blossom on her face. "I..."

The hologram vanished.

"...will," she whispered, only heard by the wind and the waves. She broke to her knees and touched the sand where his image had been. No imprints confirmed that he had really been here, that he had really said he loved her, that he had really asked her to bond with him. Nothing was left that indicated that this wasn't a dream. But it was true. "I will." She desperately hoped he had seen her smile and recognised it for what it meant: unconditional love and a "Yes".

She knelt on the beach for a few more minutes until she reached a decision. This time she was going to do what he wanted her to do: have a fantastic life. Until they met again.

She gathered her courage, got up and went to face her family.


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

The Doctor blinked and found himself back in the TARDIS. Rose hadn't been able to finish her sentence, but her bright smile had told him everything he needed to know. He had to get her back, although preferably without destroying two universes in the process. He was bound to receive at least a slap if she found out that he had taken any risks with that. And somehow he was convinced that being slapped by Rose was at least as bad as being slapped by her mum.

He turned to the console and stared at the monitor. The crack he had used to send his projection was gone. It had left a scar that emitted a very rare kind of radiation, but the remnants of the gap were far too unstable to be of use in the future.

He sighed, shut down the projector and was about to send the TARDIS back into the Vortex when he heard a demanding voice say, "Who are you? Where am I?"

He turned around to see a bride in full glory standing in the console room. "Oh, you've got to be kiddin' me!"

"What is this place?" the ginger-haired woman asked, ignoring his comment, sounding even more annoyed than before.

"The TARDIS."

"The what?"

"TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. And that's exactly where we are now. So you really shouldn't be here." He pointed the sonic screwdriver at her and glanced at the reading, quirking an eyebrow. "Definitely human."

"What else? And it's rude to point that – that – whatever it is – at people!" Then the meaning of his earlier words seemed to sink in. "What do you mean – space?"

"Space. As in 'outer space'." The woman still looked unconvinced. "Star Trek?" he tried.

"I don't believe you. That's a trick." She eyed him askance. "Must be Nerys. Nerys paid you, didn't she?"

"Who's Nerys?" She opened her mouth and he quickly continued, "No, I really don't wanna know. But believe me, we're in space." He walked over to the doors and opened them to reveal the pulsar in the background, then he closed them again. "See? Space."

The woman gasped. The Doctor ignored her and went over to the console. Maybe the instruments could pick up something unusual about her.

"This is impossible," he muttered to himself. "You can't be here." For a second he suspected he'd gone insane, well, more insane than normal, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He started the scan, turned around and faced her. Nothing wrong with asking. "What's your name?"

"Donna Noble."

"Nice to meet you, Donna. I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor?"

"That's me." He waved.

"That's not even a name!" she protested.

"Well, it's my name," he retorted indignantly. Humans. Typical. If something didn't fit into the neat little boxes they used to categorise everything, they either ignored it or complained endlessly about it. Before she could interrupt him again he continued, his voice strained, "And what were you doing before you ended up here?"

"What do you think I was doing? I'm wearing a wedding gown just for fun! I was going to be married!" She had increased the volume with each sentence. In that she reminded him strongly of Jackie Tyler. "I was already halfway down the aisle when you abducted me. And now take me back!"

The Doctor raised his eyes to the ceiled dome, silently begging every deity that might be willing to listen for patience. The most important topic on his personal agenda was to find out how he could get Rose back. Dealing with annoying ginger-haired humans that had appeared inside his frankly magnificent time ship against all odds wasn't anywhere near the top ten of that list. It didn't even make the top hundred.

"Where to?" he asked calmly.

"St Mary's, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, The Solar System." She sounded increasingly annoyed with every word. And she seemed to have lost her volume control. If she'd ever had one, that was.

Earth, London even. Why didn't that surprise him in the slightest? "And the date?" he added, a slight strain in his voice.

"What do you think what date it is? God, you're really a Dumbo. Fits the ears. Christmas, of course!" And in an afterthought she added, "2007."

"Oi! Why does everyone have to comment on my ears?"

"Well, they're kind of... prominent? And now take me to the church! _Before_ I miss it." she demanded.

The Doctor sighed. The sooner he got rid of her the sooner he could find out how to get Rose back. He set the coordinates and sent the ship into the Vortex.

~o~o~o~

Donna Noble stared at the strange big-eared man who had told her calmly that she was in space. Right now he was operating bizarre instruments which had caused the column in the middle of the room to move. If he even was a man. He _had_ asked if she was human, now she came to think of it. "Are you an alien?" she blurted out.

He turned around to face her, his arms crossed over his chest. "Yes."

"Oh my god, I've been abducted by an alien!"

"No!" he protested, looking horrified at the thought.

Then her glance fell at a blue jacket hanging over the railing. "You've abducted me – and I'm not the first one!" She held the jacket accusingly in his direction. "Where is she? Did you kill her?"

He stayed silent. A strange expression crossed his face.

"Oh my god, you killed her!"

"_No!_ She's... I lost her."

"What do you mean – lost her?"

"She's gone, alright?" His tone made clear that the subject was closed. He concentrated again on whatever he was doing and then the ship – This had to be a ship, hadn't it? They'd been in space! – hit something and she grabbed the railing.

"Oi! Be careful!"

A few levers were flipped, a couple of buttons pressed and the column in the middle of the room stopped moving.

"London, England. Christmas 2007." The man – the Doctor – said.

She opened the door. "Yeah, well, thanks for nothing."

She left the ship, only to turn back and enter it again. She marched towards the Doctor and glared at him. "I said St Mary's. That's not even Chiswick." Then she realised that there had been something very odd about the exterior of this, well, _space ship_, turned on her heel and left the cavernous room again. Slowly she turned around and looked at a blue box. This had to be a hallucination.

"It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor said matter-of-factly, as if he was used to that reaction. She hadn't even noticed that he had followed her but he was leaning against the doorframe now, his arms crossed. "I don't know what happened but she needs rest," he said, "Chiswick'll have to wait."

"Great. Fat lot of good you are, Martian," she said sarcastically.

"Oi! Martians look completely different! No spikes on my head, for instance." He sounded offended. Another strange expression crossed his face, as if he was waiting for someone to come up with a remark. He left his place and took a few steps in her direction. "Anyway, there's something wrong with my ship, as if..." Then he got a gleam in his eyes, as if he had just realised something, stared at his blue box and continued, muttering mostly to himself, "The last time she sounded like that in flight was right after the Gamestation – after she had looked into her heart."

"What. Are. You. Talking. About?"

He took two more steps in her direction and held her at her shoulders, staring intently at her with blue-grey eyes. "Donna, I need you to think. Did anything unusual happen in the last few weeks?"

"Hey, I'm getting married every couple of days. What do you think of me? Of course there were unusual things going on!" The flippant comment felt already wrong while she was still speaking.

This time he didn't seem offended. "Nah, not that sort of unusual. More like the alien sort of unusual. Lights in the sky, strange things you might have touched?"

This was too much. First she somehow ended up in space – with an alien! – instead of simply getting married and now he was blaming her for that? With a quick movement she brushed his arms off, turned around and raced towards the street.

"Taxi!"

He came after her. Great. Now she would not only be late to her own wedding, no, she'd drag along an alien in a black leather jacket. "Taxi!" she yelled again. The driver shot her a glance and then he did the unbelievable. He accelerated. "Oi!" Then she turned to the Doctor. "Do you've got money?"

"What for?"

"The taxi, you Dumbo! I don't know how it works on Mars but here we have to pay for things."

"Don't _you_ have any money?" A slight smirk crept up on his face. "Remember, I'm not from around here."

"Do you see what I'm wearing? Have you ever heard of wedding dresses with pockets? So, do you have any money, or what?"

He patted his leather jacket with a somewhat comical expression, with a tiny bit of exasperation and lots of sadness underneath. "Nope."

"Then do something about it."

With another exasperated sigh the Doctor turned around, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Stupid apes!" and went into the direction of the nearest cash dispenser in a nearby alley. As soon as he had vanished around the corner a taxi stopped in front of her. Never one to look a gift horse into the mouth she climbed in, determined not to mention the lack of money. Maybe she could still make it.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor waited impatiently for the customer in front of him to finish his business. Patience definitely wasn't one of the character traits of this incarnation, he was just better at pretending. Pretending he wasn't impatient, pretending he knew the solution, pretending he was alright. There was only one person who had always been able to see through his facade, and she wasn't here. He was fairly certain she knew he didn't have a clue how to get her back, but she believed in him. He really didn't deserve her.

He still wanted to get rid of Donna as soon as possible, but he had to admit that his curiosity was piqued. Her appearance in his TARDIS should have been impossible, especially because he had reinforced the shielding after the Gamestation. Neither the quick scan he had done with his sonic screwdriver nor the more sophisticated instruments of his ship had revealed anything unexpected. But still, something was going on here. He was interrupted in his thoughts by the squealing of tyres. Donna was gone. Apparently she had managed to stop a taxi.

He was about to return to the TARDIS and repeat the scan when he noticed a couple of Santas with musical instruments standing in front of a banner of Henrik's. He smiled briefly, lost in memories. He still owed the TARDIS for kicking him out in front of the shop. Meeting Rose had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. In the next second the Santas turned their instruments at him.

The Doctor had never liked the feeling of looking into a muzzle, although that sort of thing kept happening to him with surprising regularity.

He moved fast. With a fluid motion he pointed the sonic screwdriver at the cash dispenser, causing it to spill its contents and nearly shocking the customer in front of him to death, and broke into a run, avoiding the people who were already fighting about the money on the street. When he reached the corner he could see a taxi taking the next bend, Donna in the back seat and a Santa driving.

"Bugger!" He dashed back to the TARDIS.

Three minutes later he detected the taxi on the motorway. The TARDIS sounded as if she was in pain.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Come on! Please, old girl. Just a little bit longer!"

He quickly adjusted the settings, fixing various levers in place with a buzz of his sonic screwdriver. Then he opened the doors. Donna was banging against the window and wildly pointing at the Santa in front of her. If he didn't know better he would have thought the driver was wearing a Cylon costume from Battlestar Galactica. He directed the sonic at the door of the taxi and unlocked it.

"Donna!" he yelled. "You've got to jump!"

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Do I look as if I was kidding? Jump!"

"I'm not jumping on a motorway. I'm in my bloody wedding dress, in case you haven't noticed!"

The Doctor pointed in the general direction of the console with his sonic screwdriver to adjust the setting of the accelerator, praying it would work and his ship would hold out a little bit longer.

"Donna, I'm only saying this once," he shouted, as soon as it looked that the TARDIS would do his bidding for another couple of minutes. "Whatever they are, they want you for some reason. And I don't think it's a good one. So, your decision. Jump or stay."

She stared at him intently. "The woman you lost... Did she trust you?"

"She does. She does trust me." He emphasized the present tense. "She's not dead, Donna. Now jump!"

She jumped. And nearly managed to knock him unconscious.

Two minutes later the Doctor landed on the roof of a council estate building, the TARDIS groaning pitifully. Something was very much not right with his ship. She had never sounded like that before, as if someone was tearing her heart out. He stroked the console affectionately. "We'll just leave you to rest, old girl."

Donna had already left the ship and was sitting on the edge of the roof. He sat down next to her. "For a space ship she really doesn't do that much flying." She looked as if she hadn't even heard him. "Did you miss it?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

He nodded and grinned suddenly. "That's a change." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, searched his pockets for some time and eventually found a gasket in the depths of his leather jacket. He adjusted the setting and soniced it for a minute. "Give me your hand." He put the gasket on her pinkie.

"Great. Rub it in!" Donna said sarcastically, staring at the little black ring on her finger. "God, that looks as if it has engine grease on it."

"Oi, what do you take me for? That's a perfectly good gasket I've changed into a biodamper. With a bit of luck they won't be able to detect you now. Whoever they are."

"Robot Santas. That's insane. What are they? Are they behind all of this?"

"Nah, they're more like mercenaries. I've never seen a robot with enough imagination to successfully take over the world in my life, and that includes the Cybermen."

She looked at him questioningly.

"At the end of July? Big metal men everywhere on the planet, epic battle in the sky over London?"

"Holiday in Spain."

"They had Cybermen in Spain."

"Scuba-diving."

Great. Whenever he ran out of luck he did it thoroughly. Another ignorant human and another incident with aliens. At least his day couldn't get much worse. With that rather pessimistic thought he got up and held out his hand for Donna. Time to find out what was going on. She stared at him.

"Well, don't you want to find out what happened to your family? And your fiancée?" Eventually she took his hand and got up. A thought occurred to him. "Where did you say you met?"

"H.C. Clements. I was temping. And he made me coffee. That just doesn't happen. But Lance is the head of personnel, and he made me coffee."

He smiled, ignored her next words and remembered another couple who'd told him where they'd met. Street corner, two a.m. And he'd had that adventure as well. For a few short weeks, with Rose.

~o~o~o~

"Pete?" Rose said, her voice low. They were on their way back from Norway, where she had done the hardest thing she'd ever had to do; saying goodbye to the Doctor. Although she refused to believe that she would never see him again. She had made it back to him once before, against all odds, and she wasn't going to give up hope. Ever.

Jackie and Mickey were fast asleep in the backseat of the battered Jeep. Pete answered without taking his eyes from the unfamiliar road. "Yeah?"

She had to tell somebody, and it felt easier to talk to Pete first. He wasn't involved in the emotional mess that had overshadowed the end of her relationship with Mickey and turned her mum into a fury whenever the Doctor was mentioned. Both of them had never really forgiven him the year that hadn't existed for her. Oh, they got along, especially since he had sent her back from the Gamestation, but it still felt like they were barely tolerating him for her sake. And that hurt. Pete might not be her father, but he was a friend and that was what she needed right now.

She could predict how her mum would react. There would be lots of shouting involved, the Doctor would be called a cradle-robber, and then her mum would tell her to get over it and start a new life. Now they had money she could do so much better, she would say. As if that had ever mattered to her. On a certain level she knew her mum only wanted the best for her. She'd been a single-parent raising a child on a council estate until they'd ended up in this universe. Rose had seen how she had struggled, and she could understand that her mum would rate financial security fairly high.

She snorted. She had fallen in love with an alien who owned nothing but a blue box and had ended up paying for his chips more times than she could remember. But the Doctor had given her his hearts, and that meant more to her than any pretty boy with too much time and money on his hands ever could. He was the most powerful being in the universe and he had chosen her. She still didn't know how she could possibly deserve such a gift.

"He asked me to marry him," she blurted out before she had a chance to change her mind. "Well, his people's version of marriage, actually, but it means the same."

Pete looked at her and a genuine smile appeared on his face. Then he turned his attention back to the road. There hadn't been any traffic for miles, but the road was narrow and the terrain unfamiliar. When they reached a part that went straight ahead for about a mile he looked at her again and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "I don't know what to say," he admitted eventually, his eyes back on the road. "I'm happy for you, of course, for both of you actually. I could see how you felt when you first got here. But you said he didn't know if he could ever get here."

"I know," she replied quietly. Then she grinned. "But two persons as stubborn as we are should find a way without endangering two universes."

Pete smiled back. "Definitely." Then he asked, "Did you tell Jacks?"

"No." She paused. "I don't know if I can. I know what she's going to say. I could practically write the dialogue. It's a discussion we've had too many times since he brought me back one year later than he intended. I can't bear that right now."

"Don't you think you underestimate her?"

Rose sighed. "Maybe. Probably. She's my mum and she loves me. But I can't tell her now. Would you keep this to yourself for a bit?"

Pete nodded. "Of course. Take your time, but I think you should tell her."


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Of course it had to be Torchwood. He should have known. And to make things worse the energy that was responsible for Donna's disappearance from the church was so ancient that he hadn't even bothered to scan for it. Mostly because there was only one place in the entirety of time and space where it _should_ exist in pure form – in the heart of his TARDIS. But someone had found a way to extract it and dose Donna with it. Not to mention that Huon particles were one of the very few substances a simple biodamper couldn't hide. Fantastic. Just what he needed.

The Doctor crossed the room with a few large steps. A quick glance out of the window confirmed his suspicions. The Santas had found them.

Then the Christmas decoration came to life and his day got one hell of a lot worse. Suddenly the Santas were standing in the room, remote controls in their hands.

"Donna!" the Doctor yelled. "Get the people out of here!" For a few seconds Donna simply stared at him and he gestured at her impatiently. "Move!"

Eventually she complied. He shoved every thought not related to the current situation into the back of his mind. He couldn't afford to be distracted right now.

Remote control. He quickly adjusted the settings of his sonic screwdriver and blocked every frequency that had ever been used for that specific purpose throughout the universe. The robots stopped dead, just in time before they would have pressed really impressive red buttons on their respective remote controls. Given his vast experience with threatening red buttons that meant that there had to be explosives in the room.

"Donna!" he yelled again, while he disabled the motivators in the robots with his sonic. Now whoever was controlling them could try.

"Yes, Doctor?" She sounded annoyed. Again. It seemed that was her normal state of being. Well, he'd deal with that after he had found out what was going on here. He changed the setting of his sonic screwdriver once again and scanned for a signal strong enough to control the Santas.

"Get us some transport," he ordered in a tone not even his..., uh, Rose's harpy of mother would have questioned for longer than it took him to say Raxacoricofallapatorius. And since when exactly did he refer to Jackie as his mother-in-law, at least in his thoughts? Rose would be laughing her head off if she knew that.

"Where are we going?"

"H.C. Clements. And bring your fiancée," he told her, his tone somewhere between grumpy and excited.

~o~o~o~

Bringing the fiancée had at least solved the transport problem. Half an hour later they entered H.C. Clements and the Doctor went for the nearest computer terminal.

"Hey, that's confidential!" Lance protested.

The Doctor considered him with a long suffering glare and decided to ignore him. "You might think H.C. Clements are just fancy locksmiths, but they've been founded by Torchwood," he began the day's lecture on the mysterious ways of the universe. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the screen, overrode the access control and began to type furiously.

"Who are they?" Donna asked.

He answered her question without looking at her, his eyes never leaving the screen. "They were behind the battle of Canary Wharf." When that didn't evoke a response he continued, "Cybermen invasion?"

"Holiday in Spain, remember?"

He sighed in frustration. "Donna, you should do something about that big picture of yours."

"Why?"

"Because you keep missing it. But still... Why dose you with Huon particles?"

His gaze fell on the slightly magnetic box the owner of this desk used to store paper-clips and he could have banged his head on the desk. Stupid, him. He should have seen it much earlier. He emptied the box and took a single clip.

"Huon energy is a very ancient sort of energy, and nowadays there's only one place in the universe where you should find it in pure form: In the heart of my TARDIS. So, imagine that this box is the TARDIS and the magnet in it is her heart. And this," he held up the paper-clip, "is you. Then the particles activated and," he flipped the clip at the box, where it got stuck, "you were pulled to her. Easy." He beamed at her.

Donna stared at him incredulously. Then she wacked his arm. "Ouch! What was that for?" he asked, rubbing it. Being around Donna turned out to be at least as dangerous as being in the vicinity of Jackie Tyler.

"I'm. Not. A. Paper-clip! Bloody Martian!"

He grinned. "Come on, it could be worse. I might have compared you to a H4 pencil."

Donna glared at him. If looks could kill he would be regenerating right now. He turned to her fiancée. "Lance, what was H.C. Clements working on?"

"I don't know. I'm the head of personnel, not a bloody project manager," Lance replied dismissively.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and ignored the comment in favour of the computer. A few commands, then the monitor flickered and showed a building plan. He stared at it intently for a few seconds and raised an eyebrow. "That's interesting."

He was already halfway through the door when he turned around and noticed that Donna and Lance weren't following. "What are you waiting for? Come on!" He gestured impatiently.

Donna recovered and tugged at Lance's hand. "What's interesting?" she asked.

"That was the official building plan on the screen. And it showed just one basement level."

"So what?"

"Then how come the lift has got a button for lower basement?"

~o~o~o~

This opportunity was as good as any, Rose decided. Thankfully her mum and Mickey were still asleep in the back. She had been thinking about what she wanted to do with her life since she had come to this universe, and today's events had made it painstakingly clear that her stay here would probably be longer than she thought. "Pete?"

"Yes, Rose?"

"I'd like to switch departments. At work," she clarified. After three weeks of working part-time for Torchwood she was absolutely certain that she would never be happy in research. "Don't get me wrong, it's interesting and I'm willing to help out whenever they need my, well, expertise sounds a bit overblown, don't you think?"

"But I thought you liked it there? What do you want to do instead?"

"All that poking and prodding at alien artefacts is just... I don't know... It's different when you've been out there, seen things, done stuff. From the moment the Doctor took me to see the end of the world I knew that I would never be happy with an ordinary life."

Pete looked as if he was going to say something, but she didn't give him a chance to get a word in. "Yeah, I know that working with Torchwood R&D is not exactly what most people would call ordinary, but being stuck in a lab guessing if the thing I'm examining is a weapon or a hair dryer is driving me crazy. Mum will probably kill me, and she will definitely kill you if you support me, but the only thing I ever wanted to do was field work."

"Rose..." Pete began tentatively.

"Don't tell me it's dangerous," she interrupted him. "I know that. I've been doing that sort of things for more than two years. And remember, I was in the factory with you. I'm not going to faint if someone points a gun at me." She gave him a wry grin. "I'm jeopardy-friendly, after all."

"Rose, I don't know what your life was like with the Doctor, but endangering yourself is not going to bring him back," Pete said carefully.

"I know that, Pete. And despite what you may think I'm not reckless and I am able to follow rules." When it was important. In other circumstances, not so much. "I have learned my lesson. The hard way." It was unlikely she would ever forget seeing her real dad die in front of her, for one of her mistakes.

"But you probably would have to kill people."

She sighed. "Believe me, I know that. I'm not naive. It wouldn't be the first time. Mum believes I've got nightmares because of what happened in the lever room. She's not entirely wrong, I admit that, but that's not all. I'm responsible for the death of at least one person." She still saw Toby's face in her dreams, heard the words of the Beast. Rationally she knew that she'd had to pull the trigger, that everyone in the little spaceship would have been dead if she hadn't, but that didn't make it easier.

Not to mention that she had nearly managed to bring about the end of the world and almost killed the Doctor. During the first few nights after their visit to 1987 she had dreamed that she was the only human being left on Earth, condemned to wander the planet for eternity. At some point she would discover the TARDIS somewhere and enter the ship, hoping she would find him inside, waiting for her. Then a hologram would come to life, over and over replaying the last few seconds before the Reaper took him. Every time she'd woken screaming, only to find him in her room, telling her that he was alive, that everything was okay. Sometimes she still wondered how she could possibly have deserved his forgiveness. In his place she would have probably dumped herself on Earth.

Pete's words interrupted her thoughts. "Rose, if that sort of thing is affecting you so much, don't you think you were better off with another job?"

With great effort she shook off the memories. "Pete, that I have nightmares only means that I've got a conscience. Who would you prefer to do that job? Someone who cares or a machine?"

"If you have to ask then you don't know me at all." He sounded offended.

"I know. I'm sorry, Pete." She meant it.

He nodded. "Drop Operatives an application and if they consider it then I'll support you." Then he smiled at her. "But you're going to be the one who tells Jackie."

~o~o~o~

Maintenance tunnels were the same everywhere in the universe, in every timeframe. Oh, there were minimal differences, of course. Some had stone or concrete walls, in space stations or star ships they were plain steel, but there was one thing they all had in common, even if it should be impossible. They smelled musty. This one was no exception.

"You know, if this was Harry Potter these would be brooms," Donna grinned, pointing at the electrical scooters that were conveniently parked in a corner.

The Doctor grinned back. "Donna, if this was Harry Potter I would summon the motorcycle I've stored somewhere in the TARDIS."

Donna laughed. Lance looked far less amused.

Five minutes later, after discovering that the entire project was hidden under the Thames flood barrier, they found what they were looking for. A full-fledged scientific laboratory for extracting Huon particles. The Doctor had to admit that he was impressed. The only thing it was missing was the cliché evil scientist.

"It doesn't make sense. What would anyone want with enormous quantities of Huon particles in liquid form?" he murmured thoughtfully, while he wandered through the lab.

"What do they do?" Donna asked.

"Apart from the fact that they unravel the atomic structure, not much. That's the reason my people got rid of them."

"Your people? Who are you working for?" Lance enquired.

The Doctor grinned manically. "Oh, I'm not working for anybody. Not anymore. But I'm incredibly curious. Which makes me wonder what's hidden behind that door." He pointed with the sonic screwdriver, but before he could unlock it he was interrupted by Donna.

"Wait! You are not going to open that door until you answer a couple of questions. One: Somebody put that stuff into me?"

"Yes," he replied, staring at her intently, taking in her stained wedding dress. He had the nagging feeling that something about her was important. Something extremely obvious. Like... "The wedding!"

"Yeah, you ruined it."

"Oi! Not my fault! You were the one who appeared in my TARDIS," he protested.

"Are you saying this is my fault?" Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Donna, what did I say about that big picture of yours? Unless you dosed yourself with Huon particles it's definitely not your fault. Anyway, it was your wedding, you were excited, practically a walking hormone cocktail. That activated the particles and charged you until you got attracted by a magnet, in other words, the heart of the TARDIS."

"But what does that mean: Am I safe?"

The Doctor stayed silent.

"You said your people got rid of the particles. Why did they do that?" she pressed.

"They were deadly," he admitted, almost matter-of-factly, avoiding her eyes and staring at the wall.

"Oh my god."

He took her hand and finally looked at her. "I'll do whatever I can to sort this, Donna."

She nodded slowly.

He held her gaze for another few seconds, then he turned around and with a mighty pull he opened the door, only to stare incredulously at a full grown spider-like creature that was sitting in a web covering the entire ceiling of the cavernous room.

"Fantastic," he muttered sarcastically. "Racnoss."

Compared with what was in front of him he would have preferred the evil scientist, in every possible stage of insanity from your standard madman up to a narcissistic megalomaniac. And that included the combined forces of the Master _and_ the Rani. He really should stop thinking that his day couldn't get any worse, since fate seemed inclined to prove him wrong. As soon as he had finished the thought a couple of robots lined up along the wall of the room, which only emphasised his point.

Then he discovered the hole in the ground. "Oh, someone's been digging."

"Down and down, all the way to the centre of the Earth," the Racnoss Empress said from her position high in the cobweb.

"What for?" he asked, slightly distracted by watching Lance slowly retreating into the lab.

"Dinosaurs?" Donna suggested tentatively.

"Nah. This isn't a Jules Verne novel." He grinned at her.

She grinned back and asked, "But what are they?"

"The Racnoss. They are an ancient species from the Dark Times. I thought they were extinct, extinguished in a great war. Apparently I was wrong. They are carnivores, omnivores, even."

"They eat people?"

"Oh, more than that. They devoured whole planets. That's why the Fledgling Empires went to war with them."

The Doctor saw Lance appearing on the balcony, an axe in his hands. The bloke hadn't struck him as the adventurous type and that could only mean two things: either he had misjudged him, or Lance tried to double-cross them. Maybe he was too pessimistic in this incarnation but he somehow doubted that Donna's fiancée was going to be of help.

"They killed every one of us, except for me," the Racnoss Empress sneered, interrupting his thoughts.

"But what does that have to do with me? Why did you dose me with that Huon energy thing?" Donna demanded. She lacked the foot tapping and the dye job, but apart from that she reminded him strongly of a very pissed off Jackie Tyler.

The Doctor glanced at her and saw that her gaze was directed at Lance while she was speaking. It looked like she was trying to distract the Empress.

The creature ignored her.

"Hey, lady, look at me when I'm talking to you. What do you want with me?" Donna shouted. He was impressed, he grudgingly admitted to himself. Not everyone would try to distract a spider the size of a small cottage from what was going on behind their back, although he suspected it would be in vain.

"Oh, the bride is feisty!"

"You bet. And I don't care what you are, a spider is just a spider, and an axe is still an axe. Lance, do it!"

The Racnoss turned around and hissed at Lance, who held the axe above his head. In the last possible moment she stopped, Lance dropped the axe, and they began to laugh. Not too pessimistic, then, the Doctor concluded.

"Lance, do it!" Donna repeated, sounding annoyed.

Lance laughed harder.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said quietly.

"What for?" She looked at him for a brief moment, thoroughly confused, then she returned her gaze to her fiancée. "Get her, Lance." There was a trace of desperation in her voice.

"God, you're so thick," Lance said disdainfully.

"He brought you coffee, Donna," the Doctor explained slowly. "Every single day, for six months. Lance was the one who dosed you with Huon particles."

Finally Donna understood. "But we were getting married," she said in a small voice.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Lance sneered. "Of course I had to say yes. I couldn't risk you running off. I had already invested too much effort in you. But really, have you ever listened to you? No wonder you never managed to pull anybody else. All that endless jabbering about celebrities and diets. And don't get me started on the sex. I should be recognised as a saint for spending half a year with you."

Donna winced.

"So what did she promise you?" the Doctor asked, interrupting Lance's tirade.

The other man turned his attention to him. "You know, the big picture, you keep missing it yourself. The Human race is nothing. She gave me the chance to see what's out there. In the grand scheme of things, humanity is nothing. Don't you understand that, Doctor?"

"Who is he, this little physician?" the Racnoss Empress asked, interrupting her consort.

"Oh, I'm just a stranger, passing through," the Doctor answered evasively, digging in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver and fiddling with the setting. "But still, what are you doing here?"

Lance grinned. "This isn't like a bad movie, where you can get the baddies to reveal their plan, Doctor."

"Kill him. All we need is her!" the Empress ordered.

The Santas raised their weapons. Again. He _really_ hated the feeling of looking into a muzzle.

~o~o~o~

"You know, you're completely missing the obvious here," the Doctor said, still fiddling with the setting of his sonic screwdriver.

"And what would that be?" the Empress asked disdainfully.

"This." He pressed the button of his sonic screwdriver and prayed that his TARDIS would have recovered enough to pull this stunt. Apparently she had, because his faithful ship materialised around Donna and him. Although he winced when the bullets hit her hull. She really disliked bullet holes in her exterior. Now she would be irritable for weeks.

"Sorry, old girl." He patted the console affectionately, but received only an indignant hum in response. "When this is over we'll just float in the Vortex for awhile to let you rest. But now..." He adjusted a few knobs and loosened the handbrake. The time rotor began to move.

"How did you do that?" Donna asked, her back turned to him, her voice wavering. He knew she was still processing what had happened and needed someone to comfort her, but truth be told, he was rubbish at comforting, although Rose had told him differently. He had a long list of unsuccessful attempts to console companions as proof.

"I just reversed the charge of the particles, and they drew the TARDIS to you, like a magnet." He tried to keep the conversation on the problem at hand. Much safer that way, much less memories.

"And where are we going now?"

The Doctor flipped a switch and the time rotor slowly came to a halt. "The beginning," he replied softly, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight on the monitor. Here he was, standing in the same spot in the universe, only ten billion years earlier, give or take a few hundred million years. And without _her_. He moved his fingers. His hand felt empty, incomplete, as if it was missing a limb. Right. Forget that bit about less memories. The universe could be a bitch sometimes.

"Of what?" Donna's less than enthusiastic question interrupted his musings.

He straightened, walked over to the doors and opened them. "Donna Noble, welcome to the creation of the world."

~o~o~o~

The view in front of her eyes was unlike anything Donna had ever imagined. Dust and gas clouds sparkled in a million colours where the sun hit them. Larger rocks floated through space, every once in a while colliding, breaking in to smaller parts, or merging into bigger ones.

It took her some time to take in his meaning, but then she asked, "Where's the Earth?"

"All around us. All those rocks and dust."

She wiped her eyes. "Puts the wedding into perspective. Lance was right. We're nothing, compared to this." For a few seconds she simply stared at the sight.

"Lance is an idiot," the Doctor said, interrupting her thoughts. "Just look at it. This whole process, it's beautiful. Even the end of the world is not the end. I've been there, Donna, I've seen it. You just march on, spread out across the galaxy and mark eternity with memorable events: birthdays, weddings, even deaths. That's what living means. Everything else is just vegetating."

They gazed out of the doors for some time, both of them lost in thoughts.

"That looks like the Isle of Wight," she said eventually in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

He smiled at her. "Maybe it is. See, it begins with a single rock, a bit heavier than the others. It becomes the centre of gravity, pulling everything else in. And after a few million years..."

"Earth," she completed his sentence.

"Exactly. But the question is... what was that first rock?"

Suddenly Donna saw something moving through the dust that looked suspiciously like a star-shaped rock, drawing a line of dust and gas towards itself. "Look!"

The Doctor muttered something indistinguishable under his breath and spun into action. He closed the doors, headed over to the column in the middle of the room and began to twist knobs and turn dials while Donna just stared at him. "Hold that lever down," he ordered, pointing at a large bar next to a line of green lights.

She didn't react, still trying to process what had happened.

"The Racnoss starship was that first rock," he explained impatiently, while he furiously turned dials and flipped switches. "And I've got the dim feeling that they know that we know. We have to get back as soon as possible and stop them from whatever they're planning. Otherwise the end of the world might come a couple of billion years sooner than it should. So hold that lever down. Now, Donna!" He gave her a glare that would probably haunt her in her dreams and she complied without another word.

The Doctor dived under the grating, pulled something out that looked like the Star Trek version of a surfboard, although it was much smaller, and began to loosen a panel from the bottom of the console, quickly connecting the intergalactic surfboard to his ship.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving us a bit of protection. Hopefully. Do you see the blue button next to the line of red lights? When I say now, press it."

He fiddles with a few cables for about a minute then shouted, "Now!"

She pressed the button. Nothing happened.

"Donna! For god's sake, push that button! Now!" the Doctor yelled from beneath the console.

That did it. This was her wedding day, she had ended up in a space ship that was bigger on the inside, her guests had had the reception without her, her fiancée had only agreed to marry her so he could feed her to a giant alien spider and now another alien was treating her as if she was an idiot. "Bloody Martian! I _did_ push the button! I'm not stupid!" she yelled back.

The Doctor mumbled something that sounded like "Could've fooled me," and swapped a few cables which connected the surfboard thing to the console. Suddenly the ship jerked violently and the Doctor let out a sharp cry of pain. Admittedly her sympathy was limited.

It was difficult, what with him being buried under the console, but somehow he managed to give her an accusing glare. "What'd you do?"

"Nothing," she gave back indignantly.

He got up and stared at one of the monitors for a few seconds, then he began to type commands. "They're reversing it!"

"What?"

"Remember how I called the TARDIS to get us out of that lab? They must've figured out how to undo it."

"Well, isn't there something you can do to stop us? Like a handbrake or something?"

"What do you think I've been trying to do, Donna?" He kicked the console in frustration and smashed his hand down on the button he had asked her to press earlier. Men. If it doesn't work, use force. It seemed not even aliens were different in that regard.

Unfortunately the results proved him right. With a stuttering sound the column in the middle came to live and began to move, although it was nowhere near as smooth as it had been before.

A manic smile lit the Doctor's face and he began to adjust the instruments on the console. "Good girl! Hold on, we're landing!"

Seven seconds later the ship hit the ground.

Of course Donna ended up on her back on the grating. She would never do this again. At this point she wasn't even sure if she meant the wedding, the spider or travelling in this absolutely mad blue box, but she definitely would never do this again. Ever.


	4. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three  
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Rose could hear Jackie stirring in the back of the car. It had been more than two hours since they had left the beach and it would be another thirty minutes until they reached Bergen and could take a ferry back to England, to the place her mum had already begun to call home.

_Home_, she mused. Her home had been a flat on a council estate for nineteen years, until it had been replaced by a blue box that was bigger on the inside. The day they had nearly lost the TARDIS on Krop Tor she had finally realised that home wasn't a place, not even a blue box that could appear anywhere in the universe, anytime. Home was the people she loved, not the place where she lived.

The Void separated her from the person who meant most to her, who she trusted with her life, heart and soul. Without him she felt incomplete, afloat at sea. But she couldn't let her life just happen to her. This was not who she was. She was going to carve out a life for herself, until she met him again. If only it wasn't so bloody hard.

"Rose?" Jackie's voice interrupted her musings.

"Yes, mum?" She sighed inwardly. In an unexpected streak of reserve Jackie had refrained from asking her what else the Doctor had said on the beach. It looked as if her reprieve was over.

"What did he say?"

She kept her eyes focused on the scenery in front of her and answered calmly, "Like I said. He didn't know if he could ever cross the Void."

"Oh, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I know how much you loved him."

Rose knew her mum meant it, but it would probably have hurt less if she hadn't used the past tense. Her mum of all people should know that one didn't just stop loving somebody, even if he was gone. She nodded slowly, trying to hold herself back from reacting to the choice of words.

Jackie was silent for a few minutes, then she continued, "I know you don't want to hear it, Rose, but you have to decide what you're going to do with the rest of your life. He's not coming back."

Her mum sounded so secure in her assessment of the Doctor. Rose took a deep breath, restraining herself from leashing out at Jackie and turned around to finally face her.

"You don't know that," she gave back, sounding surprisingly calm even in her own ears.

"Sweetheart, you said it yourself: He doesn't know if he can come here," Jackie reasoned.

"But that doesn't mean he won't try," Rose said with conviction. The Doctor would bend every known and possibly even a couple of unknown physical laws to get to her. Even if it would take him years to find a safe way, he'd come.

"But you can't spend your life waiting for him."

"I never said that I would do that, mum. I've already made a decision. Pete said last week that he would like me to work full-time for Torchwood as soon as I've got my A-levels."

"You did _what_?" Jackie screeched, staring at the back of his head accusingly.

"I offered Rose a full-time job," Pete gave back calmly, his eyes never leaving the road. "She is good at what she's doing and I would be an idiot not to take her."

Rose briefly closed her eyes in relieve, thankful that he had kept her requests to himself. She really didn't want to discuss the possibility of doing field work right now, although this topic might be slightly safer than the other one.

"But it's dangerous!"

"And it's her life and her decision, Jacks."

Jackie glared at Mickey. "Say something."

He glared back. "No. I'm not getting into this, Jackie. This is Rose's decision."

Rose shot him a thankful glance.

Jackie turned back to Rose. "Sweetheart, think about it. You don't have to do this. You could go to university, make something of your life," she said, her eyes begging her to give in.

Rose sighed inwardly. She knew her mum was afraid that she would lose her. She had been like this since the year she had missed, and the carefully edited stories about her travels with the Doctor had done nothing to ease her mum's fears. But she had been lost for an ordinary life almost since the moment the Doctor first took her hand and told her to run.

"I already know what I'm going to do with my life. I told you before, mum. The Doctor showed me a better way to live. Yes, there were bad things that happened to us, but I still wouldn't have missed it for the world."

"But..."

Rose knew what her mum was going to say but she couldn't bear it right now. So she interrupted her ruthlessly. "No, mum. My decision is final."

She turned around, stared out of the windscreen and ignored all further attempts to start a conversation.

~o~o~o~

When Donna finally got up the Doctor was already at the door. "Are you coming?" He raised an eyebrow expectantly.

She rubbed her elbow and glared at him, but followed him outside.

"But what do we do?"

He grinned. "No idea."

The remark he was expecting never came. No Rose to call him out on his behaviour. His smile vanished and his hearts clenched at the memory.

Donna rolled her eyes. "I still don't understand. What do they need me for?"

"When my people got rid of the Huon particles the Racnoss web at the centre of the Earth lost its power source and they got stuck."

"Wait. You're telling me that they... they..."

"Exactly. You're the key. They need you, or better, the particles Lance dosed you with, to refuel. Unfortunately that's a bit of a problem if you take into account that their web is currently the centre of the Earth."

Donna kept silent. He had known her for less than five hours and she had never been able to keep her mouth shut for that long. He turned around, only to find the corridor empty.

"Great!" She wasn't even a companion and had already managed to violate rule number one. Although he had to admit that she might not have done it on purpose.

~o~o~o~

In the last few minutes Donna had come quickly to the conclusion that she would count herself lucky if she never saw a spider again in her life. And the same applied to cobwebs, especially if she was tied up in them with her ex-fiancée.

"You're supposed to say 'I do'," the Empress said.

"No chance," Lance gave back.

"Say it!"

He spat the words out. "I do."

Sometimes Donna really wished that looks could kill. Although she was not entirely certain who deserved that fate more: Lance or the Empress. "I do," she snapped.

"I don't," the spider said. If she had eyebrows she probably would have raised them in contempt. Then her tone became ecstatic. "Activate the particles. Purge every last one."

A faint glow began to surround Donna's body, getting stronger second by second, and Lance began to glow as well.

"Release!" the Empress ordered, and the particles _dived_ into the hole, as if they were following an order. But sentient particles were impossible, weren't they? A tiny voice at the back of Donna's mind chose this moment to point out that bigger-on-the-inside space ships that could travel in time hadn't been on her list of possible things either.

"The secret heart unlocks. My children will waken from their sleep and feast on human flesh." She raised her arms like a priestress. "The web-star shall come to me."

A scratching sound reached Donna's ear and became gradually louder. Something was moving in the hole, and it was coming nearer. Lance began to fight against his restraints, turning towards the Empress. "Use her, use her, not me!"

The Empress laughed. "Oh, my funny little Lance. The Empress does not approve." She raised her arms again, and the threads that held Lance ruptured. He tumbled into the hole, screaming, but not even his cry could drown out the scratching sounds from deep down completely. "They never learn," she commented scathingly.

"No, they don't," agreed a voice with a distinctive Northern accent. "But on the rare occasions when they don't do something incredibly stupid they're completely fantastic." Donna turned to the direction the voice had come from and discovered a dark figure standing on the ground floor. Then the man took off the golden mask he was wearing and removed a black cloak.

"Doctor!" she yelled.

"Hello!" He waved cheerfully and aimed the sonic screwdriver at her. The web around her loosened.

"I'm going to fall!" she screeched.

"Nah. You're just gonna... swing!" He grinned at her manically.

~o~o~o~

Unfortunately Donna's momentum was a bit larger than Rose's had been when she had saved him from the Autons, but he managed to stop her before she could crash into the metal staircase. Unfortunately Donna herself was also a bit larger than Rose, so the impact knocked the air out of his lungs. And unfortunately he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "You're heavy," he complained, when he had finally dragged enough air back into his lungs to be able to speak again.

She swatted him.

He rubbed his arm. Again. He was sensing a trend. "What was that for?"

"I'm _not_ heavy! Bloody alien!"

"I could've let you crash into that wall, you know." He grinned at her.

For exactly five seconds Donna just gaped at him. "Oi!"

"The doctor-man amuses me," the Empress said, slowly coming nearer.

The Doctor winced inwardly. He really could have done without that view. His instincts screamed at him to just kill her and her breed. The urge had been there from the moment he had first seen the Empress. For all their arrogated superiority Time Lords were no better than humans. Most people on this planet were afraid of spiders on a certain level, due to some archaic genetic trait. But with the Time Lords the fear ran even deeper, and that had nothing to do with the slightly larger scale of the Racnoss in comparison with Earth spiders.

Even in the Dark Times his planet had been protected by almost impenetrable barriers. The Racnoss were one of the very few species that had ever managed to break them, almost destroying their entire civilisation. The fear of them had been hard-wired into his people's DNA. Until his forth life no other species had ever again directly invaded his planet, and that had been his own doing. The invasion had been the main reason why his people had decided to join the other Fledgling Empires in their crusade against the Racnoss. Getting rid of the Huon particles had been more of a by-product.

Urging Donna to go first, he slowly climbed the stairs in his back, never turning his back on the Empress. This would end here for good, one way or another. When he reached the first landing he leaned casually against one of the vertical joists and crossed his arms, glaring at the giant spider.

"I'm just saying this once, so I suggest you listen carefully. I give you a choice. I can find you a planet, along with the chance to coexist. Or else I'll end this here."

The Empress laughed.

"I take that as a 'no'."

"Oh, how clever you are, doctor-man. And now I'll show you what happens next." She raised her arms and the robots that lined the walls like tin soldiers raised their weapons. "At arms!"

He sighed inwardly. It wasn't only humans who never learned. One buzz with his sonic screwdriver and the Santas shut down for the second time in a couple of hours.

The Empress turned her attention back to him. "Robo-forms are not necessary. My children will feast on Martian flesh."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "How many times? I'm not from Mars." Honestly, this was worse than explaining quantum physics to Jackie Tyler. Not that he ever would have attempted to do that, at least not as long as he was still more or less sane.

"Then where are you from?"

For a long time he hadn't been able to think about his home planet, let alone call it by its name. He hadn't even told Rose, and she had been kind enough not to ask. "Gallifrey."

"They murdered the Racnoss!" the Empress thundered.

"Oh, let's not get into what you did when you invaded my planet, shall we?" he replied, sounding almost nonchalant, although he felt anything but.

She hissed at him, and he decided that he had given her enough chances. Time to end this for good.

He pressed a button on his sonic screwdriver and one of the tanks in the laboratory exploded. A wave of Huon particles in liquid form poured into the room. Its power caused the Empress to lose her stand. When the pull dragged her along and into the hole in the ground she screamed in unadulterated fury.

At another pressing of the button the remaining tanks in the lab exploded, the liquid flooding the cave and finally vanishing in the hole. Unfortunately not even this wouldn't be enough to get rid of the Racnoss permanently. It was like flushing a spider down a drain. Literally. Not enough water, and it would come back eventually.

"And now for my next trick." He turned to Donna. "Do you remember that I said the Huon particles were lethal?"

"Do you really think I would forget that? I have that stuff in me!" she almost screamed.

He scanned her quickly. "No you haven't. It's gone. The Empress drained you completely. Anyway, the thing about the particles being deadly wasn't entirely true. In the beginning Huon particles were just a part of the barrier that separates the universe from the Void. They can be counteracted by Void stuff in combination with an extremely rare sort of energy. Which is just as well, because otherwise the universe would've turned into an incredibly large pile of dust aeons ago. The balance only skipped because the Racnoss used them as fuel."

"And what exactly does that mean?" Donna spat out every word, apparently annoyed of him for some reason. Not that that was something new.

He grinned at her. "Did you ever wonder how the particles could drag you across an entire galaxy _and_ through time into my TARDIS?"

She just stared at him.

"It wasn't just the TARDIS that attracted the particles. You ended up there because she had been sending a projection through the Void at the time which amplified the effect, but it was mostly the Phyton energy bleeding out of a scar in the fabric of time and space that pulled you there. Although the TARDIS was the dip net that stopped you from ending up as a part of the barrier to the Void. Without her being connected to the Void the residual energy in the vicinity of London would have drawn you in. And believe me, you really wouldn't have liked the side effects."

"So you're going to send them there?"

"Nah. Why do something complicated when there's more than enough Phyton energy in the middle of London to get rid of every remaining Racnoss in existence?" He grinned manically.

If the Prime Minister was as efficient as he thought she would be, Harriet should have evacuated Canary Wharf by now. Two birds with one stone. He hadn't done something about Torchwood yet, deeming the task of finding a way to send a message through the Void more important, but he wasn't going to ignore its existence any longer. The things Torchwood had gotten hold of could alter the entire timeline of the Earth and destabilise the entire universe, and that was not going to happen as long as he had the chance to prevent it.

Although blowing up something with permission somehow took the fun out of it. Oh well, there were probably worse solutions to this particular problem.

~o~o~o~

From her place on the stairs Donna watched the Doctor climbing back down. He walked towards the rim of the hole and stared down into the abyss, arms crossed, his eyes blazing with blue fire.

"Oi! Racnoss! Do you wanna know what happened to your precious web-star?"

An angry hissing was his answer.

"You really don't know anything about Time Lords, do you? 'Cos if you did you'd know that most of us were extremely unimaginative when it came to procreation. Boring, really, almost like knitting. So saying something like that about my mother isn't going to work. Yours on the other hand... I imagine she had really weird taste in men. Oh, wait, she did. She devoured them, after all."

The hissing got louder.

"Anyway, I had a chat with the Prime Minister earlier. Lovely woman, Harriet Jones. Very polite, under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, mind, that would be unfortunately for you, she really didn't like your web-star wreaking havoc in the City of London. Especially not after the Cybermen and the Daleks last summer."

Another hiss.

"Pity, that. You could have learned that you don't mess with this planet. So, where was I? Oh, yes. She didn't like it. And do you want to know what humans do if they don't like something?"

This time the hissing was accompanied by a faint glow in the depths.

"They turn into a five-year-old with a temper tantrum. And break it. Nasty habit, that, but in this case probably understandable, don't you think?"

The hissing sounded incredibly furious by now.

The Doctor winced. "Oh, tell me when you find one, would you? I'd love to have a few words with them. Although I've got the feeling that's not going to happen anytime soon." Despite his choice of words his voice was like ice. Donna shivered involuntarily.

Another angry hiss came out of the depths, and the shine intensified, while the Doctor continued to taunt the Racnoss. "I dunno if you've noticed, but you're glowing. And did I mention the large amount of Phyton energy that's leaking out here? If you ever paid attention in chemistry you might actually have a clue as to what that means." Although the words sounded deceptively harmless the temperature in the cavernous room seemed to drop a few degrees.

This time the hiss sounded more like a furious scream, which was almost instantly followed by a blinding flash. Silence settled in the room, only to be replaced by something that sounded like distant thunder.

The Doctor stared into the abyss for a few seconds, standing completely still. The mad energy he had sported had apparently left him. Eventually he turned towards the door to the lab.

"Doctor?" Donna was still standing on the first landing of the stairs, uncertain if she should go to him. "What happened?"

His voice sounded almost lifeless when he answered her. "I ended it. They got drawn to the massive amounts of Phyton energy in Canary Wharf and the particles reacted. Without the TARDIS being connected to the Void there was nothing to stop them. They're gone."

"You _killed_ them?"

"You might have noticed that I gave them a chance first." This time it was him hissing angrily at her, and the fury in his eyes made her stagger back a step.

He looked away and took a deep breath, apparently trying to calm himself down. After a few seconds his gaze returned to hers. "I didn't want to kill them, Donna. I'd rather have taken them to another planet. But I couldn't let them win. Everyone on Earth would have died if I had." She could see the truth of this statement in his eyes. "That's what I do, Donna: I make decisions because no one else will."

Donna nodded in acknowledgement of his words, but didn't trust her voice just yet. She didn't know what to think. When he had been taunting the Racnoss it had almost seemed as if he enjoyed it, but she also believed that he hadn't wanted to kill them.

She didn't have much time to ponder his words, though, because the Doctor turned back into the direction of the door they had used when they had entered the room for the first time. "And now there's only one thing left to do: Destroy the rest of this lab," he noted grimly.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor had to admit that the laboratory was surprisingly well stocked, even with a few things he would never have expected in this time frame. One more reason to do what he was about to do. With the chemicals available and the provided equipment it took him less than ten minutes to conjure a concoction that bore a striking resemblance to Nitro-9. Another five minutes later he had placed the explosives next to integral parts of the laboratory and was certain that the entire equipment would be thoroughly destroyed. After a bit of digging in his jacket he discovered a few time fuses and set the countdown, praying they would work properly. Just this once. Then he turned around and grabbed Donna's hand, a manic grin on his face. "Run!"

Two minutes later he shut the doors of the TARDIS behind them and sent them into the Vortex, then he leaned against the console, feeling exhausted. He hadn't slept since he'd lost Rose. Not really, apart from a few catnaps. He couldn't, and he wasn't sure that would change anytime soon. After the Time War he had seen the battles in his dreams, the destruction of Florana, the fall of Arcadia, and, worst of all, the last days of Gallifrey, when insanity had blossomed like black henbane. The dreams had nearly driven him beyond the brink of madness.

Now every time he closed his eyes for as much as five minutes the same sequence repeated itself, over and over again. He saw the white wall in the lever room and Rose falling towards it, while he couldn't move a single limb. She fell and Pete never appeared to catch her.

Rose was right. He needed someone to keep him company. Preferably her, but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Right now he was completely out of his depths. He just couldn't see a solution. And Rose would kill him if she ever found out that he had spent his entire time looking for a way to cross the Void.

So a new companion it was. Someone he could show the universe while looking for a way back to her. And he had to admit that Donna had impressed him once she had got over the 'I've been abducted by an alien' phase.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor flipped a switch and adjusted a lever. The column in the middle of the room stopped moving and the noise of the engines turned down.

"Here we are. Still London, England, and still Christmas," he said, gesturing towards the doors.

Donna opened the doors tentatively. She really didn't fancy a sequel to the events of the day. She left the ship and found herself in a spot that looked almost familiar, although she had certainly never seen the large pile of rubble in front of her.

"Where are we?" she asked, her tone demanding an answer.

The Doctor had followed her and stopped dead in the door frame. At her question he winced visibly and when he answered her question he avoided her eyes.

"H.C. Clements."

"You blew it up?" she screeched.

He crossed his arms in a defensive posture. "How was I to know that the integral structure of the building wouldn't even survive a minor vibration? Just be glad they haven't begun to dig the new Tube tunnel yet. The building would have come down in seconds."

"But you blew it up! That was my job, and you blew it up!"

Suddenly the Doctor began to chuckle.

"Do you think this is funny?" she demanded.

"Well, I sorta blew up Rose's job on the day I met her."

He grinned at her, although she could also see sadness in his eyes.

"That's the woman you lost?" she asked, her annoyance dissolving into thin air.

He just nodded, apparently not going to continue the subject, then he straightened. "So, Donna Noble, what are you going to do now?"

She thought for a moment, the question being completely unexpected. "Oh well, since I'm not getting married and _someone_ blew up my job... I dunno, travel? See the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, maybe, or the Acropolis."

The Doctor considered her for what seemed to be a long time. "Do you want to _really_ see it? Watch history happen in front of your eyes?" he asked finally.

"What do you mean?"

"See the pyramids being built, meet George Washington, piss off Queen Victoria, no, already done that..."

"You pissed off Queen Victoria?" she interrupted him.

"I just told her to run for her life. You would have thought she'd prefer that to being eaten by a werewolf. We could also have chips in the restaurant at the end of the universe..."

"That _exists_?" Wait, werewolf?

"Yep. But he got thing with the Vogons completely wrong. Blimey, do you always have to interrupt me?"

She grinned. "Of course."

He gave her one of his manic grins in return. "So, what do you say? Come with me?"

She considered his offer for a moment then shrugged. "Oh, why not."

"Fantastic." He smiled genuinely, an expression that lit up his entire being, but after a second it vanished, only to be replaced by seriousness. "Be very sure, Donna. This life I lead, it's dangerous. And I can't promise that I will always able to keep you safe."

She looked at him, really _looked_ at him, and thought about his words. What he hadn't said was probably even more important than what he had said. He hadn't even been able to save the woman she suspected he loved, and it was killing him. He really needed a friend. She grinned at him.

"As long as you at least promise that there won't be more giant spiders trying to eat me."

"No visits to Arana Eight, then. But you'd miss out on the fantastic chocolate ice cream, you know."

"Oh well, in that case..."

He grinned back. "Then what are you waiting for?"


	5. Chapter Four

Let's go AU, shall we?

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

"Can't we just pretend that I'm a distant relation or something?" Rose asked, leaning against the mantelpiece in the living room. Although she should probably call it the drawing room, given the size and the interior, she thought. Expensive furniture and carefully selected paintings showed money and taste. She had dreaded entering the house after Canary Wharf, the memories of the Cybermen breaking windows and killing the guests of the alternate Jaqueline Tyler's birthday party still fresh, but Pete had changed most of the layout during the last years, apparently driven by the same memories.

They had returned from Bergen three days ago. Since then she had tried to come to terms with the fact that there was no easy way back, even if she had suspected it before she'd even gone to Norway. To say that it wasn't easy would probably be the understatement of the century. She would turn around and expect him to stand somewhere nearby, she would begin to ask him something, she would reach for a hand that wasn't there. She had allowed herself one night to break down, to shed the tears she hadn't cried in front of her family, and when she woke up she felt more or less ready to face her new life.

During the first few weeks since she had ended up in this universe, before they had gone to Norway, she had somehow managed to keep under the radar. Not even a couple of shopping trips with her mum had changed that. But soon the press would realise that she was _news_, as Pete had put it, and then hell would break loose. Pete was right, they needed a plan, but pretending that she was the long lost daughter of the alternate Jacqueline and Peter Tyler was just _weird_.

"I mean, I don't want any of this," she added. Her gesture indicated that she not only meant the Tyler Mansion. "With my Torchwood salary I can afford a small flat in London, well, if I find a flatmate. Sarah from accounting said she was looking for one. It would make everything much easier, you know that."

"Jackie is your mum, Rose, and we're not going to say otherwise," Pete said. "And the press will eventually figure out that Jackie and you are much closer than you should be for you being her second cousin once removed, or whatever you were thinking of."

"But the whole story doesn't even make sense, Pete. Why would anyone in their right mind believe that a doctor at the hospital kidnapped me and told you I was dead when there aren't even photos of Jackie being pregnant? And that you didn't have a look at the body because you were too grief-stricken to bear it?" she said. "Let alone the part where you find me by complete chance, because you needed a blood transfusion and I was the only person whose blood group fit. That's worse than EastEnders!"

Pete looked at her in confusion. "What's EastEnders?"

Rose grinned suddenly. "A soap. On the telly. Mum scared the living daylights out of the Doctor once when she threatened him with an EastEnders marathon. Next thing I knew we were halfway to the Andromeda galaxy."

Jackie giggled. "The look on his face..."

For the first time since she had been stranded in this universe, Rose laughed genuinely but sobered up quickly. "Still, I don't think anybody will believe this."

"Rose, I thought you of all people would have listened to the Doctor," Mickey threw in, mischief sparkling in his eyes. "I can tell you why this is going to work. Just like he said: Humans are thick!" He grinned broadly.

Rose grinned back. "If you put it that way... This probably a tiny bit more plausible than a mass hallucination of an alien space ship crashing into Big Ben."

"And with a really good software I could probably manipulate a couple of old photos so this universe's Jackie looks pregnant," Mickey added. "Do you know a good hacker who could insert them into the online archives of a couple of news agencies in the correct time frame, Pete?"

"I think I might know the right person. The computer she can't hack hasn't been built yet. She can also get your data into all necessary government computers, Rose. Unfortunately we'll have to change a few dates." He considered her appearance. "You look about twenty. Nobody is going to believe that you've been born in 1986. I'll tell her she should put 1989 instead."

Rose shook her head. "I still don't think that this 'lost daughter' story is a good idea. It'll only raise questions. What if someone discovers the truth?"

"How?"

"Pete, all of us are covered in Void stuff. The Doctor discovered that with 3D glasses, for god's sake! That's not exactly rocket science. What if people find out that Mum, Mickey and me are from a parallel universe? The Torchwood in my universe tried to harness the energy produced by the ghost shifts, and that nearly destroyed both worlds. What do you think will happen if someone does the same here?"

Truth be told, this wasn't the only reason why she didn't think this would be a good idea. She also didn't want to be reduced to being Peter Tyler's lost daughter, forced to impersonate a society princess. That just wasn't who she was, plain old Rose Tyler, shop girl. But most of all, it felt disloyal to the man who had died for one for her mistakes, the man who had been her dad for such a short amount of time.

"Rose, you've got no idea what this world is like. I promised him I would protect you, and that's what I'm going to do. You'll be much safer as my daughter than alone."

Rose opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Mickey cut in, "Listen to him, Rose. I know you don't like it, but it's better this way, believe me. Pete's right, this world is nothing like the one we grew up in. I never told you, but the day we crashed here, when I went to see my gran, it was like visiting a ghetto. People were being controlled when they entered or left the area. Things have improved since then, but it's nothing like back home."

She stared at him in shock. "But why..."

"It's mostly the larger cities," Pete said, disgust evident in his voice. "You wouldn't have noticed in smaller towns or villages, or even the part of London you went for shopping. Ten years ago there was a major economic crisis and there were riots. The government was already mostly owned by Lumic at the time. They panicked and set up a zone system, to protect the Great and the Good from the force of the masses. Once the zones were in place they stayed. There have been fewer curfews, but that's basically all that's changed."

His expression was stormy. Rose made a mental note to talk to him about what was going on here. He had worked with the Preachers to bring Lumic down, and she strongly suspected that he wouldn't like the current situation either. If she was going to work for Torchwood full-time she had to know exactly what she was getting herself into and find out if there was a chance for her to help.

"You don't know me, Rose, not like you hopefully will one day, but believe me, this whole charade is necessary. As you said, you're from a parallel universe, and this is my best chance to protect you. All of you." Pete looked at her intently.

"Rose, please," Jackie begged, willing her to give in.

She nodded slowly. Having to act in public as if Rose wasn't her daughter would only upset Jackie. She knew her mum only wanted the best for her, and although they disagreed on what that actually was, she never would hurt her like that. Besides, her mum's acting skills had never been extremely convincing. If she let something slip someday the results might be catastrophic, for all of them.

Pete smiled at Rose. "I'll have the PR department draw up a press announcement tomorrow."

~o~o~o~

Rose opened her eyes and remembered instantly. Today it was three months. Three months since her grip on the lever had slipped. Ninety-one days since her life had been turned upside down once more.

Of course her mum felt the need to point out the fact over breakfast. The Doctor could be annoyingly tactless on occasion, but her mum was even worse in that regard.

"Rose, don't you think you should finally get on with your life? It's been three months."

She knew exactly what Jackie was trying to tell her, and it hurt. The wound hadn't had a chance to heal yet, and she doubted it ever really would, not even when she saw him again. Even then there would always be the fear that she was going to lose him once more, one way or the other.

In a possibly very see-through (and in hind-sight completely useless) attempt to change the topic she said, "I _am_ getting on with my life, Mum. I've got a job, and I'm trying to get my A-levels. Speaking of which, I have a study group this evening, so I won't be home for dinner."

After having lived on the TARDIS for so long, living with her mum and Pete in the mansion was less than optimal. She had meant it when she had told Pete that she would get herself a flat. She hadn't had much choice in the matter, though, because the paparazzi had been a real problem during the last couple of weeks. They'd even tried to interrupt one of her classes, but the school had put an end to that quickly.

Her only consolation was that the press hadn't yet caught on her working with Torchwood. Hopefully that wouldn't change when she finally got her A-levels and started doing field work. Dragging the press along on her missions would have her back in research faster than she could say Raxacoricofallapatorius. But first came her A-levels, and before that came said study group.

"You're going out? Did you meet someone nice?" Jackie asked, apparently having missed everything she had said, apart from 'won't be home for dinner'.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Mum, it's a _study_ group. I'm going there to study for my exams, not to meet someone."

"But maybe you should. Go out and have some fun, Rose. You're just burying yourself in work. He wouldn't have wanted that."

The Doctor would want to break the neck of anyone who looked at her in a certain way, she thought wryly. Not that he would have actually done it, at least that's what she hoped, but still. He'd been thinking about throwing the Walking Innuendo (his exact words) out of an airlock for a mostly harmless comment about strawberries during breakfast the day after they had visited Cardiff, at a point when he had already considered Jack as a friend. And that had been long before they had become lovers.

She got up, put her mug in the sink and faced Jackie. "He wants me to have a fantastic life, and that's exactly what I'm trying to have," she told her. "Until we see each other again."

"Love, you know what he said. You told me yourself. He won't come," Jackie reasoned.

"He _will_ come," she said with conviction. "If there is a way he will find it, even if it takes him years."

"Rose, darling, think about it. He's probably already found someone else to travel with. Don't tie yourself to a man who will forget about you soon, if he hasn't done that already."

She took a deep breath, desperately trying not to yell at Jackie. "Mum, I really hope that he has found someone to travel with. I asked him to, for crying out loud. And he never forgets about anyone he's ever travelled with, even if they haven't been..." She broke off before she could say more, but it was too late.

"Oh, I _knew_ it!" Jackie burst out. "You kept going on and on about not being like that, but you were, weren't you? That dirty old..."

"Stop it, mum!" Rose interrupted her angrily. "You've got no idea what you're talking about. We weren't like that for a long time. But he loves me and I love him, and nothing is ever going to change that." She knew she was getting louder but she didn't care.

"He might have told you that he loved you, Rose, but that doesn't mean it's true. Most men would tell you anything to get into your knickers. Believe me, I know."

Rose simply couldn't stop herself any longer from leashing out. "Yeah, I clearly remember the string of men you paraded through your bedroom."

When she saw hurt on Jackie's face she regretted her words instantly. "I'm sorry, Mum. I really am," she apologised and took another deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down. "Look, I know your relationship with Dad wasn't the perfect fairy tale you told me when I was little, but I know the Doctor loves me. Even if he hadn't finally told me on that bloody beach, I would have known anyway."

Almost from the moment she had met him there had been something in every gaze he gave her, in the way he held her hand, his hugs. All of them said that she was the centre of his universe, and she had only begun to understand why when he had told her about the War. Gradually he had let her into every dark corner of his soul, trusting her enough to burden her with the knowledge of what he had done. Afterwards he had offered to take her home, so certain that she wouldn't want to spend any more time in his presence. His hearts had been in his eyes then, and she had known.

"Rose, open your eyes. He probably just said the words because he knew that nothing would ever come of it. He's in another universe, for god's sake." Jackie was getting louder as well. For once Rose was thankful that they weren't back in their old flat for this particular discussion, because everyone in the entire house would have been able to hear them.

"He'd never just say the words if he didn't mean them. And so you just know, I'd give almost anything to get back to him," she practically yelled.

"I can see that," Jackie grated out. "Especially 'cos you've done it before. The estate wasn't good enough for you, so you ran off with an alien! You left your family, the people who loved you, and vanished for a whole year!"

Rose winced visibly. "And I'm still sorry for that. I didn't mean to be gone for so long. But that's beside the point. It wasn't that he could show me the universe. It never was. When he took my hand in the basement of Henrik's, I suddenly felt _alive_. I told you before, mum. The Doctor showed me how to live, how to make a difference. That's why I've fallen in love with him. He makes people better. He made _me_ better."

She was unable to stop herself. The words just tumbled out, and she didn't even know what she was going to say next. What came out was probably the worst thing she could have said at this moment.

"You keep going on about how he won't come, that he doesn't love me, but you're wrong. Do you really wanna know what he told me on that beach, mum? Do you? He asked me to marry him. And I said yes."

A ringing silence followed her words. It didn't last long.

"He _what_?" Jackie screeched, in a tone that almost shredded her eardrums. Her mum's reaction was exactly what she had imagined. Now they would be getting to the part of the conversation she had been dreading since they had left the beach.

"Asked me to marry him," she repeated, more calmly this time.

"But he's an _alien_!" Trust her mum to point out the obvious.

"Yes, he is. But I love him, and that is all that matters."

"You're not marrying an alien, Rose Tyler! That's... That's just _wrong_!"

"I dunno if you've noticed, but I'm an adult, Mum. I can make my own decisions," she snapped.

"Oh, I'm not so sure about that. Right now you're sounding as if you've been brainwashed!"

For a split-second Rose stared at her in shocked silence. "Mum! He never would... I can't even believe you said that!"

Jackie clasped her hands over her mouth and blinked a few times. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean it," she said ruefully.

Rose avoided her eyes and nodded, not trusting her voice. For some time they were silent.

"Love, I know what you said, but think about it. You could do so much better than him," Jackie pleaded eventually.

Rose smiled at her sadly. "You know, that's probably the only thing you and the Doctor will ever agree about – that I could do better than him. Mum, I don't even want you to be happy for me, but can't you try to accept that I love him?"

"Rose, do you think I would have helped you to pull the TARDIS open if I hadn't believed that you loved him? But I still think you're making a mistake."

"Mum, I already told you, he will come. I don't care if you think I'm giving up on something if I wait for him. I know I don't. So would you please do me a favour and let me live my life? Because if you can't do that, then I'd better move out," she told Jackie calmly.

With that she snatched her bag from the chair she had deposited it during breakfast and left the house.

~o~o~o~

It was one of those days. One of those days when everything seemed to go wrong. One of those days that had the chance to be absolutely fantastic. One of those days he would have loved to share with Rose, the shouting, the running, the danger, the laughter. Sharing it with Donna was not bad, not by far, but it was different. For instance, there was much more shouting involved, from his companion, that was, and the danger of being slapped was decidedly higher.

They had been aiming for ancient Rome, but when he exited the TARDIS he found himself in the middle of London, less than forty years after William the Conqueror had deserved his title. For a few seconds he stared at the spot where nine hundred years later he would be running across a bridge, hand in hand with Rose. Then he glared at his ship, but received only an innocent hum in response.

"Are you sure this is Rome? I mean, why can I understand everything?" Donna interrupted his thoughts.

"Every other time I would say that's because the TARDIS translates it, but in this case it's mostly 'cos we're in medieval London," he answered lightly, trying to shake off the memories for now.

"London? You took me to London? I can have London whenever I want to!" She sounded annoyed, although he couldn't fathom why.

"_Medieval_ London, Donna," he gave back patiently.

"I can have that, too. Ever heard of medieval festivals?" she said stubbornly.

Medieval festivals, right. He rolled his eyes. "Donna, time travel and medieval festivals are two completely different things. Besides, you couldn't have Westminster Abbey in Norman style and the White Tower while it was still brand new." He grinned at her.

Donna shrugged. "Oh, in that case... Do you think they've got a market?"

"This is London, Donna. Of course they've got a market somewhere."

"Well, we could use some milk. I don't care if you're content with tea that can stand on its own, I want cream."

She had medieval London in front of her nose and she wanted to go shopping? He sighed inwardly. The things he did for companions.

Once they had reached the market Donna immediately began to browse the stalls, haggling with the vendors as if she'd been doing it all her life. She was brilliant; he had to give her that. She probably would be able to sell a fridge to a polar bear and convince him he'd made a good bargain.

One hour later he could finally see the end of the market. He estimated it would take them another quarter of an hour, but then his ordeal would be over. Unfortunately he hadn't taken into account the universe's perverse pleasure in torturing him.

It was the fifth before last stall that attracted his attention, and he stepped between Donna and another woman to take a closer look. There was a large assortment of jewellery on display, most of it completely worthless, but what had caught his eye was one piece in particular, a pendant that would have looked Gaelic to everyone who didn't know what the engraved symbol represented.

When he met the vendor's eyes they looked almost snake-like for a millisecond. He barely managed to hide his surprise. What was a Fegesdan doing in medieval London selling a pendant that shouldn't even exist anymore? He dug through his pockets for his sonic screwdriver to examine them.

Unfortunately he had completely forgotten why he never used that particular setting. There was stuff and it went _ding_, which alerted the woman who was standing next to him and gossiping with one of her friends. The conclusion she reached was only to be expected, given their surroundings.

"Witchcraft!"

He had barely time to hide the sonic in one of his inner pockets before four guards appeared and tried to arrest him. He shot Donna a glance to tell her to keep out of this, but she took it as her cue to attack one of the guards.

Things went downhill from there rather quickly.

~o~o~o~

Whatever had happened to the British judicial system in the last nine hundred years, it had certainly become a lot less efficient over time. It took the Sheriff of London less than three hours to charge them, put them on trial, sentence them and throw them into a cell in the White Tower.

It hadn't exactly helped his case when one of the guards had discovered a golden cup in one of his pockets. It was a ceremonial goblet from Araxius Seven and he'd completely forgotten that he'd ever had it, but unfortunately it looked suspiciously like a goblet the Westminster Abbey had lost a couple of years ago, relatively speaking.

On the plus side, being charged with theft from the church was slightly better than being charged with witchcraft, mostly because it was easier to prove. Which it meant they would skip torture and sentence them to death immediately. Fortunately they hadn't found any of the other pockets, because that would have been a real mess.

So he had ended up on the floor of a room that was completely empty, apart from a pile of straw in a corner that looked as if it had been there since William the Conqueror had finished the building. The look he received from Donna said that he deserved nothing less for landing them here. Then she turned to start banging at the door and insult the guards and their respective ancestors while he got up and leaned against the wall, still trying to figure out what a pendant that couldn't possibly exist and a Fegesdan were doing in medieval London.

"Well, don't you think you should do something?" Donna demanded when she had finally given up on banging against the door and play name-calling with the guards. She got surprisingly creative when it came to insults, although he could have told her that that particular strategy never worked. Neither did trying to seduce them, despite what Jack Harkness had told everybody who had been willing to listen.

He crossed his arms and grinned at her. "No need."

His demeanour seemed to annoy her, although he couldn't fathom why.

"No need? I dunno if you've noticed but they're going to execute us tomorrow, first place in the morning!"

"Oh, that," he said dismissively. "Do you've got any idea how often I've been sentenced to death in the last couple of years?" Make that centuries.

"You're telling me that this has happened to you before?"

"Yep."

"And you're telling me that there's no need to do something?"

"Yep." A broad smirk accompanied the affirmative.

"Do you think this is funny?"

"A bit."

Smack.

He rubbed his cheek. "That hurt!" And apparently he had found the only person in the entire universe whose slaps were worse than Jackie Tyler's.

"Good." She stood in front of him, arms crossed and said, "And now you're gonna explain to me how you're going to get us out of this mess!"


	6. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

_He rubbed his cheek. "That hurt!" And apparently he had found the only person in the entire universe whose slaps were worse than Jackie Tyler's._

"_Good." She stood in front of him, arms crossed and said, "And now you're gonna explain to me how you're going to get us out of this mess!"_

"Do you know what day it is, Donna?"

The non-sequitur seemed to annoy her even more. Her eyes blazed with anger. "How should I know? You're the bloody Time Lord. I thought I would spend a day in ancient Rome, and what do I get? London and an execution."

"Today, Donna Noble, is the evening of 2 February, 1101."

"And what's that got to do with the price of tea?"

He grinned. "In a couple of hours Ranulf Flambard, the first ever prisoner of the Tower, will escape through his window, using a rope smuggled into his cell in a flagon of wine."

"And what exactly is your point?" She spat out every word.

"Guess, where his cell is?" He pointed at the ceiling, still grinning.

She stared at the ceiling, at him, at the small window that allowed them an unimpeded view over the Thames and back at him again. Then she asked incredulously, "You want me to climb out of that window and more than sixty feet to the ground, on a rope that we'll have to catch first before we can use it? Are you insane?"

"Well, the bishop survived it," he pointed out reasonably.

Unfortunately the point was completely lost to Donna.

"I am _not_ climbing out of that window!" she snapped, sounding suspiciously like Jackie Tyler. Again.

"You can always stay here and try your luck with the hangman on the Tower Green. It's your execution," he told her with a smirk.

For nearly ten seconds Donna was absolutely speechless. "You... you... Time Lord!" The last two syllables came out like they were the worst offense she could think of.

"That's me!" he grinned, unfazed. "Well, you also could have tried to seduce the guards, if you'd been less creative with the name-calling." He paused briefly, still a smirk on his face. "Not that it would have worked."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She narrowed her eyes, and he could almost physically feel another Oncoming Slap.

"It almost never does. Unless it's a more or less elaborate trap." He should know. He had statistical evidence.

Donna glared at him, but relented eventually. "And what do we do now?"

"We wait."

"What for?"

"The delivery of the flagon and the guards getting drunk. And I really would appreciate if you could shut up for a bit while I try to figure out what a Fegesdan is doing in medieval London." Once again he wished that he had kept his mouth shut. Fortunately Donna was neither a Basilisk nor Medusa, otherwise he would have either dropped dead or turned to stone at her gaze.

~o~o~o~

Drinking songs were the same all over the universe. Fun while being drunk, downright annoying while being completely sober. Being imprisoned tended to make things worse, since one lacked the opportunity to change one's location. By the fourth time the guards repeated what must have been a medieval version of 'Seven Drunken Nights' the Doctor was seriously considering to throw overboard what was still left of his sanity and give utter madness a try.

Donna on the other hand was fast asleep, exhausted from more banging against the door and glaring at him. Her head was leaning against his shoulder, and she was snoring softly, although for the sake of his wellbeing he would never tell her. Once or twice he had caught himself looking at the dead weight resting against his shoulder, expecting to see blonde hair, to hear the soft noises Rose made while she was sleeping. Then he would remember and go back to staring at the opposite wall, thinking about the numerous times he had watched Rose in her sleep, missing the feeling of her warm hand unconsciously reaching for his.

Half an hour later the drinking songs eventually died down, not one second too early, because insanity had been looking like a more inviting option with every repetition of that infernal song. He got up, steadying Donna's body to prevent her from gliding down the wall. Time to leave their present accommodations for good – or at least until the next time he ended up in the Tower.

"Donna?" he said, touching her shoulder.

She slowly opened her eyes and looked at him through bleary eyes. "Hmmm?"

"Are you up for a bit of abseiling or do you still wanna try your luck with the executioner?" he asked cheerfully and held out his hand to help her up.

Despite the huge yawn she tried to cover with her hand she still managed to glare at him murderously. He sighed inwardly. Getting her imprisoned couldn't have been _that_ bad, not even for a first trip, could it?

He suppressed a sigh and set about to explain how exactly this escape was going to happen.

~o~o~o~

It took him more than two minutes to wriggle through the small window, mostly because he refused to shed his leather jacket during the process. Three minutes later he reached the end of the rope and dropped down the last five feet. Admittedly his night sight was much better than a human's, so he was fairly certain that it would take Donna at least twice the time.

"Now, Donna," he hissed, looking up to discern her figure against the dark walls of the building. "Like I said, one foot after another. No need to hurry."

If only it was true. Given his track record they'd run into a couple of guards before this was over. He adjusted his position slightly, so he was standing directly under her, focussing on her descent.

"Don't you dare stare at me! My knickers are none of your business," she yelled down.

He really should have explained the whole 'escaping' thing better, he thought. If she continued to make herself clear in that volume, they'd be discovered before she'd have even reached the ground and end up in that prison cell again. He had the dim feeling she wouldn't like that either.

"One, I'm not interested in your knickers, two, either I'll make an attempt at catching you if you fall, or I'll stop looking up. Your choice. And for god's sake, shut up," he hissed.

"Oi! Don't talk to me like that!"

"If you two could stop your bickering for the time being, I'm trying to escape here," a sarcastic voice made itself known. Judging by the sound the man was hiding in the bushes that covered the foot of the building.

"Who's that?" Donna demanded to know.

"That, Donna, is His Excellency, the Bishop of Durham. And he definitely has got a point, so be quiet."

Apparently the presence of the bishop was enough to grant them heavenly interference, because a miracle happened: Donna kept silent until she reached the ground, panting heavily.

The Doctor turned to the bishop. "I don't suppose you could give us a lift to the other side of the river, Your Excellency?" he asked lightly.

"How do you know that I'm waiting for a boat?" the man asked, sounding surprised.

The Time Lord leant against the wall. "Well, the southern wall is least guarded because it's protected by the river, so it's an obvious escape route."

"And why would I help two criminals to escape from their just punishment?"

"Oi! We didn't do anything!" Donna protested. The bishop looked at her in astonishment, apparently having completely forgotten her presence.

"Donna, what did I say about being quiet while escaping?" the Doctor said. "Although she's got a point. It was a misunderstanding."

"You'd say that when you were guilty, too."

"Yes, we would," the Doctor conceded with a smile. "But if we were guilty, do you really think refusing to help us would stop us?"

"I guess not," Ranulf Flambard gave back.

The Doctor grinned. "Then what are we waiting for?"

~o~o~o~

They had to wait a couple of minutes for the signal, then they left the shadows and dashed across the open space towards the southern wall. After sneaking up on the guard's walk they discovered that their boat was already waiting for them, hidden in the shadows. One of the crewmen threw up a rope which the Doctor caught and fastened to a battlement.

Ten minutes later, after yet another abseil, they crossed the Thames. They landed slightly down the river, and from their position Donna could see the tower of a smaller church standing where once Southwark Cathedral would be. After saying goodbye to the bishop, she followed the Doctor into the maze of small streets that was Southwark until he eventually stopped.

"And what do we do now?" Donna asked and leant against a wall, thoroughly exhausted. If she never had to see a prison cell again, let alone abseil in any way, shape or form, she'd count herself lucky. The Doctor on the other hand looked as if he'd only been for a walk, although he'd helped with the rowing.

"We ask the Fegesdan what he's doing in a timeframe he doesn't belong to and offer him a ticket home."

"We ask?" She stared at him incredulously.

"Basic form of communication among most non-telepathic species. It's been known to work," he replied sarcastically. "Sometimes you even get useful answers. And I really don't make a habit out of hitting people over their heads in dark alleys so I can read their minds without them making a fuss. Too complicated."

"You can read minds? Oh my god, did you read mine?" She'd kill him if he had, alien or not, having saved her life from that spider or not.

"Why would I want to do that? You never stop talking as it is; I really don't need to read your thoughts on top of that. Besides, trying to read a human mind needs a lot of concentration, 'cos you lot have got the attention span of an excited cocker spaniel. Humans! How do you manage with your funny little brains? Trying to read them constantly would be the direct route into madness, and I can manage that on my own, thanks."

Excited cocker spaniel! If she wasn't so exhausted, he'd get another slap for that. Sometimes she really wondered why anyone would want put up with that sort of behaviour, but then he did something incredible or smiled one of those rare smiles that lit up his entire being. In those moments she could understand why someone would fall in love with him.

She sighed. "Right. So we visit that alien. Do you've got any idea where to find him?"

"Nope."

"Let me guess: We'll ask for him as well?"

He wouldn't really do that, would he? Because in that case she would _definitely_ kill him. She wasn't certain that exhaustion counted as a valid excuse for self-defence, but right now she was more than willing to take the risk. She wanted a shower and a bed, although not necessarily in that order, and if he forced her to knock on every bloody door in this town until they found the alien she would not be responsible for her actions.

"Nah. Just this once, Donna Noble, I'm gonna scan for alien tech." He grinned at her.

She couldn't help herself. She grinned back.

~o~o~o~

They wandered through the dark streets, the Doctor occasionally pointing his sonic screwdriver in various directions and mumbling something completely indistinguishable. Eventually Donna reached a point where all she wanted was to curl down somewhere and sleep.

"Can't we wait until tomorrow to find him?" she asked, trying to suppress a yawn.

"Probably. But he doesn't belong in this time frame, let alone this planet, and with every day he stays it's more likely that he'll change history somehow. And believe me, whenever that happens it turns into a disaster sooner or later. Usually sooner." He paused for a moment. "I'll offer to take him home, but I need you to play along. The Fegesdan are a trader race, and they don't respect anybody who doesn't live according to their rules."

"What do you mean?"

"I normally wouldn't do this, but he'd be offended if I didn't haggle with him. And you really don't wanna know what the result would be. Let's just say, he's got sharp teeth for a reason. I need you to get the price down without making it look suspicious." He grinned at her. "Just think of it as playing 'good cop – bad cop', just with bargaining."

Another thirty minutes later the Doctor stopped in front of a nondescript house and knocked on the door, using some sort of rhythm. There was absolutely nothing to distinguish it from its neighbours, nothing to indicate that an alien was living here. The thought gave Donna the creeps. How many of them were there in her time, going about their business without people even knowing they were among them?

The Doctor knocked a second time, and this time Donna could hear something moving in the house. Eventually the door opened and revealed a man who seemed to be in his fifties, wearing contemporary clothes. He said something that almost sounded like a hissing and the Doctor answered with a similar sound. Then suddenly she could understand everything again.

"I take it you're not here for business," the man said, shooting her a glance.

"Depends on your point of view," the Doctor gave back. "But I don't think you want to discuss this on the street, do you? I'm the Doctor by the way, and this is Donna." He looked questioningly at the man in front of him.

"Tauslir Clan Cigisd." He bowed slightly, then stepped back and the Doctor entered the building. Donna followed, stopping briefly at the threshold. Inside the presence of electronic bits and bobs that covered every available surface gave away that this was nothing but a contemporary house.

"Your main tachyon drive?" the Doctor asked.

Tauslir nodded. "I don't know what happened. I was on a journey to Talaxir Seven when I got hit by a shock wave. It didn't even show up on my instruments. Next thing that happened was the gravity of this planet pulling me in. All I could do was land my ship safely, but it destroyed my engines."

He gestured awkwardly with his arm. Although he had appeared human, on closer look it seemed as if he had two elbows and his eyes looked almost snakelike. Donna hadn't noticed this back at the market.

"This may seem like a stupid question, but when did your ship get hit by that wave?" the Doctor questioned.

"15 Hubab."

"And which year?" The Doctor tried to hide it, but there was a note of impatience in his voice.

"It is the seventeenth year of the reign of Colvis Clan Teregsd. Where are you from that you don't know that?"

The Doctor's shoulders slumped briefly, as if this had been an answer he'd been dreading. Then he straightened and looked at the alien.

"I can offer you a passage home." He paused deliberately. "Against adequate payment, of course."

"Doctor!" Donna hissed.

He ignored her and gave the Fegesdan a disinterested glance.

"What do you want?"

"Three quarters of the jewellery you didn't sell yesterday."

"Unacceptable."

"Half. And only because I was in such a good mood when I got up this morning."

"That's armed robbery! I wouldn't even be able to pay my bills when I get home."

The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, you can always stay here. The next few decades are a bit boring, but with a bit of luck you'll get to see The Anarchy." He turned to her. "Let's go. He's obviously not interested."

"But, Doctor, you can't just leave him here!" Donna exclaimed and threw her hands up in the air theatrically. "He'll never see his home again!"

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the Doctor shaking his head infinitesimally. Maybe less hand-waving?

"Not my problem," the Doctor said. "He doesn't want to pay the price, he doesn't get a passage. Simple as that."

"Doctor, imagine if you could never see your planet again!" She wrung her hands, and the Doctor winced slightly. Still too much acting? "Couldn't you go down with your price? Just a bit more."

The Doctor glared at her, then turned back to the Fegesdan, rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Women. No business sense and too much heart. One third of your jewellery. And I get to choose which."

"One piece. And I decide which."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Do you take me for an idiot? Do you really think you can fob me off with junk? I get to choose one quarter of your stuff, or you can spend the next couple of decades in a time period without indoor plumbing and risk being burnt on a stick if someone discovers that you're not human. And without your cloaking device that's decidedly more likely than not. I'd have to shut down your electronics, you see. Can't have that lying around in this time period. Would cause all sorts of paradoxes."

"Doctor!" she exclaimed, sounding shocked. He wouldn't really do that, would he?

The alien slowly closed his inner pair of eyelids, hiding his snakelike eyes, then opened them again. "A tenth. And you can choose one piece."

"Done."

~o~o~o~

The Doctor closed the door behind them, shutting the noise of Fegesd out and sent them into the Time Vortex.

"Prison break, easy. One person safely returned to his correct timeline and for once no alien plot to change history or take over the planet, even better." He grinned at Donna. "Not sure how that happened, 'cos this is London after all, but who am I to complain?"

It had been a long time since he last had had a day like this, without the world almost ending, a day where everybody lived. Rose being here to see it would have been the one thing that would have made it truly fantastic.

In the end, the pendant was the only thing he had taken as fare. For him, it had been the only piece of value anyway, although some of the others had been worth much more. Normally he wouldn't even have considered using a trip in the TARDIS as bargain, but this had allowed the Fegesdan to keep up appearances.

He ran his fingers gently over the contours of the pendant, feeling every scratch and every mark that dented the metal. The stone that was set in the middle of the tiny piece of jewellery looked almost like amber, and it seemed to change its colour depending on how the light fell on it, sometimes to a dark brown, sometimes to gold. It told stories of a life, of having been worn with pride. It wasn't perfect, but that was part of its beauty.

"What is it?" Donna asked. "Is it dangerous? Is that the reason why you wanted it?"

"No. It's not dangerous. It's a very old pendant," he said softly. "Something my people gave to their beloved ones, back in the time when they still bonded out of love and not out of political interest. The legends said that young men went looking for gemstones that matched the eye colour of the woman they loved, and they wouldn't come back until they found the perfect stone."

He trailed off, still staring the little piece of jewellery in his hand, still unable to believe that it even existed. It should have been impossible. Everything connected to Gallifrey had been removed from the timelines when he had used the Moment, but not only did this pendant exist, it looked as if it had been designed for Rose. Maybe it had fallen through time, like that Dalek in Utah, and somehow the Fegesdan had gotten hold of it. He doubted that he'd ever find out.

He ran his thumb over the locket once more, the motion almost a caress. Then he slipped it into one of his pockets and turned back to his companion, his hand hovering over the controls. "So, Donna Noble, where to next?"

She stared at him as if he had lost his mind. "Bed. And if you disturb me during the next twelve hours, the slap you got in the Tower will seem like a light summer breeze to you. So no waking, not even if the world is ending." With that she turned on her heel and left the room.

The Doctor just stared at her retreating back. And they called _him_ the Oncoming Storm?

~o~o~o~

The annual Vitex charity party was the society event of the year. Her mum had been nagging her almost constantly since they had returned from Norway three months ago, so Rose had finally agreed that this would be her debut. Besides, it would raise questions if the new-found daughter of the Vitex CEO didn't attend the party.

Jackie had almost driven her crazy during the last two weeks, with endless shopping trips for the perfect dress, the perfect shoes and the perfect accessories. Three years ago she probably would have loved it, nowadays she simply wanted to pick a fitting dress, reasonable shoes, preferably a pair that would allow her to run for her life, and be done with it. Although she had to admit that the TARDIS wardrobe room might have spoiled her in that regard.

If she was honest she hadn't even minded the shopping or the dressing up, although she would have had much more fun if there had been a chance of the Doctor getting her out of the dress afterwards. No, what drove her up the walls was her mum telling her what a wonderful opportunity this was to get on with her life, despite the discussion they'd had about that specific topic a couple of weeks ago.

Rose stood in front of her mirror, examining the fall of the dress. The dark blue satin gown had an empire waist that was embroidered with tiny golden flowers. It was held up by thin straps and fell to her knees. Compared to the latest fashion in this universe it was positively chaste, despite the low neckline. It had taken her some time, but eventually she had discovered matching shoes and a light silk shawl in exactly the same shade of blue. It reminded her of the TARDIS.

If she closed her eyes she could almost imagine the Doctor standing behind her, observing her in the mirror. His cool fingers would glide over her shoulders until they reached the straps of her dress and straighten them. Then they would wander further along her collarbone to the thin gold chain that held her TARDIS key, the only jewellery she had decided to wear, to show the world who she belonged to. He would follow the chain until he reached the soft curve of her breasts, his fingers ghosting over her skin but not quite touching her.

He would whisper dark promises in her ear, telling her what he wanted to do to her, how jealous he was of every man who saw her in that dress and how wonderful it would look on the floor of their bedroom. Then he would run his thumbs over her nipples and circle them lightly, until she wished he would _really_ touch her body. But he would simply step back and hold out his arm for her like a gentleman while she would almost groan with frustration, burning for him. She would spend the entire evening teasing him in every way she could possibly imagine, until…

A knock on the door shattered the fantasy.

"Are you ready, darling?" her mum's voice said.

Rose took a deep breath, grabbed shawl and purse, and went to face the hyenas.

~o~o~o~

Rose had refused any suggestion to make a grand entrance, and simply appeared among the guests. It took her less than half an hour to decide that staying away from this event would have been wiser. Although she had expected that her first appearance in society would be the topic of conversation, it was overwhelming.

She usually didn't mind crowds, and normally she loved parties, no matter where and when in the universe, but this was getting to her rather quickly. The hyena comparison wasn't far from reality. Everyone was staring at her, pointing and whispering when they thought she was looking elsewhere. She had met alien species that were considered as the proverbial example of rudeness in their respective galaxy who behaved more politely than the people who thought of themselves as 'high society'.

But she was Dame Rose Tyler, at least in her original universe, and she had seen and done more incredible things than most of them could ever imagine. She straightened her back, gathered her courage and decided to have fun.

Her mum seemed to love it. But then she was _the_ Jaqueline Tyler, not some long lost daughter the paparazzi had declared as their prey of the year. Her mum just had to pretend that she had suffered severe memory loss during the Cybermen attack and was only recovering slowly. When Pete had come up with that explanation Rose had had to suppress a grin, because she had been imagining what the Doctor would have to say on the topic. Probably something along the lines of, "Wished she'd lost it in the first place," or, "No big difference."

Rose still wondered that people actually believed her cover story. The whole tale was so see-through that one could read the small print of an insurance policy through it. Let alone that it had led to a couple of completely unexpected problems. Try to make up a plausible lie about your past when you didn't know anything about the country you lived in. This was still Britain, true, but things were different here, had been for centuries.

She let her eyes sweep over the crowd until she discovered Mickey and Jake near the bar. Two friendly faces where she didn't have to pretend. Not much, anyway. She was already halfway there when Jackie stopped her.

"Rose? May I introduce Jason Avery? His father is the CEO of Obsidian Ltd."

Jason was tall and blonde with green eyes, wearing a suit that screamed money. But despite his outward appearance, his expression told her that she was in severe danger of dying of boredom if she spent more than half an hour in his presence.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Rose," the young man said politely, taking her hand and shaking it lightly.

_Run for your life._ The words popped into her mind unbidden and her heart clenched at the memory. It wasn't the first time someone had said that he was pleased to meet her, not by far, and most of the time the words didn't trigger that reaction. But this time it was different somehow. She knew exactly what her mum was going to do, and it hurt that Jackie didn't seem to be able to follow her request and leave her alone.

With a polite smile she began to make small talk, although even that was a problem. Talking about the weather could lead only so far. And 'Hello, nice to meet you, what do you think about parallel universes and aliens?' would have her in a padded cell rather quickly. Talking about travel on Earth would lead to the conclusion that she was probably even more empty-headed than any society princess in her universe she could think of, since she might mention countries that didn't even exist here. Gingerbread houses was the wrong expression, bloody maze would be much more accurate, she thought wryly.

Eventually Jason suggested the garden and she agreed, deeming the rare flowers this universe's Jackie Tyler had let her gardeners plant there a safer subject for further conversation than anything else she could think of. Besides, the mansion was still giving her the creeps, especially with all those guests around, despite the changes Pete had made. Every time she looked at a window she expected a metal arm breaking glass.

She still had the urge to run, but forced herself to stay. She had promised herself that she would have a fantastic life, and she was fairly certain that the Doctor wouldn't want her to bury herself in work instead of living. Although he would be marvellously jealous if he could see her talking to Jason. She could almost hear his snarky comments about her penchant for pretty boys.

Rose followed him outside. The garden was lit with white lampions that illuminated the paths, the air heavy with the scents of various flowers. It was devastatingly romantic, and she would have given anything to share the moment with the Doctor instead of a high society idiot. Although, knowing the Doctor she'd probably running through the garden instead of walking, either in pursuit of something or running for her life.

Jason stopped under a tree and turned to her. "So, Rose, what does a beautiful flower like you do when you don't adorn society events with your presence?"

Had he really said that? The only person she had ever known who could have delivered that line more or less successfully was Jack Harkness, and the pretty boy in front of her certainly wasn't him. "Oh, you know, work for my father," she answered evasively, her mind preoccupied with coming up with a believable excuse to get rid of him.

"Work?" The way he repeated the word sounded like he was forced to think about something distasteful. "What about having some fun?"

The way he leered at her told her what he was referring to. She shuddered inwardly. "With you?" She raised an eyebrow. "I'd rather cuddle with a Cyberman."

"Come on, Rose. You certainly won't regret it." He smirked at her and produced a small metal box. "You need something to relax."

"No." Her voice was like ice.

Suddenly he was pressing her against the tree and tried to kiss her. She moved her head to avoid him and wriggled a bit to adjust her position, then looked at him. "What letter of the word 'no' did you not understand? All those drugs fried your brain, or what?" she asked scathingly. It took more than a bit of groping to intimidate a girl who had grown up on a council estate and dissolved the Dalek Emperor into atoms.

Jason took half a step back, but didn't let her go. "Stupid bitch! You should count yourself lucky that you got out of your zone. Nobody insults me without paying for it," he sneered at her.

"Oh, really?" She raised an eyebrow, her fingers already touching a pressure point Jack had shown her once. It had already come in handy a couple of times, but she would never have thought that she would have to use it at a party. "And how are you gonna make me if I do _this_?" She pressed and he broke down to his knees, yelping in pain.

"You're insane!"

She ignored the comment. "_You_ can count yourself lucky that I'm in a forgiving mood. But if you do that ever again I'll cut your balls and feed them to the kois in the pond. Although I'm not entirely convinced that the poor fish would survive it. And that would be a pity, don't you think?" She gave him a smile that was so sweet it hurt.

Jason winced.

"And I suggest you prepare a couple of believable excuses for the next, oh, three hundred Vitex parties." Without another word Rose turned back to the mansion. She held her head high and her shoulders straight, desperately trying not to run. She felt sick. She had known this would happen. Probably not exactly like this, she certainly hadn't expected to be propositioned by one of the pretty society boys, but people treating her like she was nothing more than an object labelled as 'Vitex heiress' was what she had feared.

It was humiliating. It was like being a shop girl again, just with fancier clothes. Everybody had just seen a girl from the estates who could count herself lucky that she was folding jumpers and trousers in a shop in the city instead of working in a chippy or at the butcher's, until the evening the Doctor had blown up her job. Now everybody was just seeing an empty-headed society princess and Pete's money.

She entered the house, determined to leave the party instantly. In the main hall she was stopped by Jackie who had been talking to the Mayor of London.

"Where are you going?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Rose could have exploded, but somehow stopped herself from yelling at her. Sometimes Jackie's timing was even worse than the Doctor's. "Do that never again," she hissed at her mum, then she left the room.

~o~o~o~

"You're gonna freeze to death, Rose," Jake said from behind, draping his jacket around her shoulders.

"Thanks." She stared into the dark landscape, watching the reflections of the streetlamps in the waves of the small river, then gazed at the stars above her. "That's Orion's belt," she said eventually, pointing. "The left star, Alnitak, has got a planet which is inhabited by blue humanoids. I met one on my very first trip with the Doctor. She was a plumber, of all things." She fell silent, lost in memories.

"You miss him," he stated. It wasn't a question.

It took her some time to answer. "More than I can tell. You miss Rickey, don't you?"

He nodded. "Mickey is my friend, but seeing him... Sometimes it makes things worse."

They fell silent for awhile.

Eventually Rose turned to him, a tiny smile on her face. "Care for a pint? I think the patrons in the village pub will be much better company than the hyenas in there." She gestured at the mansion.

Jake grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

><p>AN: This is the last chapter set before Wings of Gold. If you haven't read that yet, you should probably do, because otherwise the following chapters will make a lot less sense. If you don't care for smut or are underage, go straight to the second chapter...


	7. Chapter Six

This is the first chapter set after Wings of Gold, and it will probably make more sense if you've read that.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

The Doctor slowly woke up from the best sleep he'd had in weeks. As always, holding Rose had helped to keep the nightmares at bay, even if she hadn't been physically present. He had told Rose that they were sharing a dream, but it was so much more than that. As far as his people had been concerned it was just another aspect of reality, a place that existed beyond time and space. For him the night he had spent with Rose in the pavilion had been as real as if they had landed the TARDIS on the planet. To Rose it would probably seem like a very intense dream, but the memories wouldn't fade.

Unfortunately it was even more complicated than that. Everything that was done and said there had repercussions in the physical world. He even could influence their surroundings to a certain point, although that apparently did not apply to food, he thought wryly. But there were also other limitations. For example he couldn't simply bring schematics for a potential Void crossing device to one of their meetings. Not that he had even a basic idea for one. Oh, he really should have explained this better to Rose.

One day they would find a way across the Void, but until then they at least had this. They would be able to see each other, talk to each other, hold each other. Not often, but sometimes. That was something, and it was a lot more than he had dared to hope. Truth be told, he hadn't even been sure she'd say yes when he'd asked her to bond with him on that godforsaken beach. Now he just had to find a way to get her back.

It was time for a trip to Cardiff, he decided. He owed someone an explanation and an apology. And if he was very, very lucky he might get access to the CCTV footage of the battle of Canary Wharf and a few answers. He showered quickly, donned his clothes and left his room, yelling for his companion. "Donna!"

Two minutes later he was in the console room and set the coordinates for Cardiff, Wales, 2007, then he retreated to the galley and put the kettle on. By the time the tea was ready Donna finally appeared, still yawning widely. "What's going on?"

"We're going to Cardiff!" he announced brightly and handed her a mug.

She took it, although the first sip of tea did nothing to improve her mood. Not really unexpected, that, but it couldn't hurt to try, could it?

"Cardiff? You wake me up just because you want to go to _Cardiff_?" she asked incredulously.

On seeing her expression, the nerve endings in his left cheek reminded him why it was a really bad idea to piss off Donna Noble. Let alone a Donna Noble who hadn't finished her first mug of tea yet. Nevertheless he confirmed their destination. "Yep!"

"Are you insane?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Certified on a couple of dozen planets," the Doctor gave back with a slightly manic grin. "But that's not the reason why I want to go to Cardiff."

"Then why the hell are we going there? What's so bloody interesting about Cardiff?"

He sighed exasperatedly. "Humans. The truth can be staring you in the face, but you keep ignoring it. Did you ever wonder about the number of gas leaks and mass hallucinations in Cardiff?"

"Should I have?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Donna, what did I say about that big picture of yours?"

She narrowed her eyes even more. "What. Are. You. Talking. About?"

"There is a massive rift through space and time in Cardiff that causes disturbances in time and attracts aliens. And it's one of the very few places in the universe where the TARDIS can fuel up."

"Are you telling me you want to go to Cardiff for a pit stop?"

"Basically, yes."

"And you can't have a pit stop on, I dunno, the second star on the right and straight on till morning?"

"Nah, pit stops on Volag-Noc would be a really bad idea. Too cold and too many mass murderers. Besides, I want to meet an old friend." Although the word 'friend' was probably pushing it, considering the events on Satellite Five, he added mentally while he dumped his mug in the sink.

"You've got friends?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor gave back indignantly. Three or four maybe, if he included those former companions who would probably wait more than half a second before they shut their respective doors in his face.

"Right. And that's the reason we end up running for our lives wherever we land."

"Oi! That has got nothing to do with it."

"No, that's just your charming personality."

"I can be very charming, I'll have you know," he replied petulantly and crossed his arms.

Donna grinned. "Remind me that I ask Rose how you pulled her with that personality when you get her back. It can't be your piloting skills, or we wouldn't have ended up on Teralix in the middle of the monsoon season."

The Doctor had barely opened his mouth to respond to this completely, well, _mostly_ unjustified offence when the TARDIS jerked suddenly. He managed to grab the counter, or he would have tumbled against the doorframe. Donna lost her footing and fell against him. It felt as if they'd been hit by something, which should have been completely impossible in the Void. For about two seconds that felt like an eternity nothing else happened, and then his ship started to shake violently.

"Bugger!" Whatever just had happened, this was Not Good, the Doctor decided, disentangled himself from Donna and left the galley.

"What did you do?" she yelled.

"I didn't do anything!" he gave back, already halfway down the corridor to the console room, occasionally having to steady himself against the walls to keep upright. He cursed under his breath. The TARDIS seemed to be completely out of control.

Donna followed him hard on his heels. "Well, you must have done _something_!"

He ignored her accusation. Five seconds later he reached the console room and began circling the console, trying to stabilise their flight path. He desperately adjusted the controls, but without any visible effect. "Hold that lever down!" He pointed wildly in the general direction of the instrument.

Donna dashed to the console and grabbed a lever.

"No, not that one, that would kill us. Take the one next to the green lamps," he yelled.

Donna complied immediately, while struggling to keep on her feet.

"Second button on the left. Now!"

It took her a moment to reach the button because the ship jerked again, but she managed to press it. Then the Doctor yanked another lever in the opposite direction. The shaking stopped and a mauve flash light began to blink madly.

"What happened?" she asked, panting heavily.

"We've left the Time Vortex and she's piloting through real space," he replied, adhering to the bare facts. He didn't even have a basic idea what might have caused this. He stared at the monitor and typed a few commands, but the screen stayed dark. Eventually blue lamps began to light up on the console, indicating various system failures. There couldn't possibly have been more destruction if someone had blown up the console room, and he didn't even know what had happened.

"What does that mean? Doctor?"

He ignored her in favour of the status lights. Another light began to flicker. He leaned heavily against the console and closed his eyes in despair. By the looks of it, the dematerialisation circuit was heavily damaged, as well as the temporal stabilisers. If he didn't get them working again once they'd landed, they'd be stuck there indefinitely. Wherever they were heading to. The TARDIS had diverted every available spark of energy to the engines and didn't let him access the navigation system. Knowing her, she would put everything she had into getting them to a place where he could find the materials to repair her, but with a damaged TARDIS he really would have liked to at least know where they were going.

Another alarm interrupted his thoughts. They were approaching a gravitational field that was drawing the TARDIS in rapidly. In her current state she would be completely unable to land them securely. And without access to the controls he just could sit and watch. He circled the console in four large steps and pulled Donna to the floor, then he put her arms around a handhold on the console.

"Keep your head down, and whatever you do, hold on to that handle. We're gonna crash."

~o~o~o~

Rose sighed, shut the computer down and buried her head in her arms. The report of today's events was finally done and e-mailed to her supervisor. It hadn't taken her long to hate Torchwood's penchant for paperwork passionately. She was tempted to manufacture an invasion – just to get rid of the paperwork for the time being. If only she could be certain that the paper trail _after_ the invasion wouldn't be worse.

Almost six months ago, she had promised herself that she would have a fantastic life. But sometimes it was just hard. Today had been better than most days, having something to do and running for her life helped. It had been worse when she had been stuck in research. But every so often she would forget and expect to see a leather clad figure reaching for her hand or to hear a rough Northern accent telling the aliens that whatever they were planning ended here and now. She missed him, and the dream she'd had a few nights ago had only helped so much.

Nowadays she ran alone, despite Mickey's or Jake's presence. There was a lot less telling the aliens off and a lot more shooting. And with the Doctor there had definitely been a lot less red tape involved. Unless she counted the various times they had ended up in various prisons all over the universe and the additional hours they had spent filling out whatever paperwork the respective local government required to let them go.

She had fond memories of Noia Five. Two hours in a prison cell for crossing a street followed by eight hours being buried under red tape. Finally they had signed the last pages as Bonnie and Clyde and had violated approximately seventeen additional laws on their run back to the TARDIS, the local law enforcement in hot pursuit. Noia was rated fairly high on her personal "places to never visit again" list.

Right. Time for her private research project, aka Advanced Crossing Dimensions. She had already found out that original dimension jump technology had only worked because of the cracks between universes, but she still didn't know how the cracks had been created in the first place. That was next on the agenda. Children's play, really, she thought sarcastically.

With another sigh she got up, left the office and turned towards the lift. In the lobby she got out, went into the cafeteria and snatched a few fruits from one of the baskets on the counter.

"Still working?" Eliza, one of the dinner ladies, asked.

"Yeah. Paperwork to finish. You know how it goes," she lied. "Many people around?" Sometimes the dinner ladies knew better who was in the building than the security team.

"The boss and a few of the directors. Joshua from R&D, and one or two of the archivists."

Pete had mentioned a board meeting during breakfast this morning, Rose remembered. Her relationship with him still bordered on awkward; and mostly they resorted to small talk. They still differed on various topics and probably always would, but he hadn't told Jackie that he'd known about the Doctor's proposal. That had helped, although she wasn't sure if she really saw him as her dad. It still felt disloyal. But Pete had proven himself as a very good friend, and that was something she wasn't likely to forget either. He knew _her_, not the made up story the public relations department of Vitex had told the press, and that was very important to her.

But if Joshua was still in R&D she wouldn't have a chance to get into the archives undetected. With a smile and wishes for a quiet night she left the cafeteria and went back to the lift. "Sod it!" she decided. What could they do? Fire her? Unlikely. They'd rather confine her to desk duty for the foreseeable future. Not that she'd like that but it was worth it. She pressed the button for sublevel C.

~o~o~o~

Rose rubbed her eyes. She had spent more than two hours in the basement, staring at the report about the dimension jumps, trying to make sense of what she already knew.

Fact one: The Void Ship contained the Genesis Ark and the Genesis Ark was Time Lord technology, obviously. Fact two: There were no Time Lords in this universe, the Doctor had said as much. Both facts combined meant that the ship's origin was her universe.

From what the Doctor had told her she imagined the Void like the area between the two walls of the Tower of London. Assuming she was right with that image this led to two possibilities. One, the Void Ship had accidently damaged the walls to this universe and created the cracks. If that was the case, had the Cult of Skaro ever entered this universe? She did not exactly look forward to running into renegade Daleks without the Doctor to deal with them, but she would have to prepare herself for the possibility.

The other possibility was that the Void Ship didn't have anything to do with the cracks on her side of the wall. That would mean that they were sort of natural. And in that case they couldn't be dangerous to the integrity of this universe, could they?

In addition, they still didn't know what had happened to the cracks on this side of the Void after the Doctor had closed them on his side. Had they vanished as well? And if they hadn't, could she use them?

Her musings had reached that point when suddenly her mobile buzzed. She recognised the caller ID.

"Yeah, Mickey?"

"Rose? Emergency. See you in conference room one in ten minutes." When they had grown up together she would never have imagined how businesslike Mickey could sound.

"Okay." She pressed the end button, collected her papers and stashed them in a box in the far corner of the archive where hopefully nobody would ever look for something. Then she grabbed her phone and headed for the lift, wondering what was going on.

~o~o~o~

Half an hour after the time the meeting should have begun Pete Tyler finally entered conference room one, where eight people were waiting for him. He looked exhausted.

"Sorry. The Defence Secretary called when I was about to leave. Kept going on about the budget."

A woman who looked as if she was in her fifties groaned. "When will the Defence Secretary learn that we can either spend our time with actually doing our job or with administrating it?"

After a few seconds Rose remembered her name. Jane Cunningham was the head of the R&D department and responsible for the budget. Pete wanted to keep the administration as small as possible, so most directors had two functions. And she seemed to prefer the not-administrative role.

"He'll get over it," Pete said. "I'm not going to change a single thing about how this agency works." He looked at Mickey. "So, what's going on?"

"We received an enquiry." Mickey had been the agent in charge when the first transmission came in and thus the case had been assigned to him. At that point the task had mostly comprised of channelling information to the parties involved, while the decisions had been made elsewhere.

He activated the large monitor that covered one of the walls. A vaguely humanoid alien appeared on the screen, with greenish-black skin and an additional set of eyes. "We are the Corrivex. We seek audience with your world leader," the alien on the screen said, then Mickey froze the picture.

"That was two days ago. According to the rest of their message they wanted to negotiate a trade agreement."

"And where exactly is the emergency if this is already two days old?" Terrence Gold was a small man with mousy brown hair who had fought his own personal war against the Cybermen. This had brought him in contact with Torchwood, and now he was in charge of the field agents which meant he was Rose's supervisor.

"The message was received by the government as well. They sent a reply."

"And why didn't they inform us?" Jane Cunningham asked.

"They did," Pete said, resignation audible in his voice. "After they had sent the reply. Apparently they thought they needed the publicity. I can't wait for the elections. At least then we might have a government that deserves the name. At the moment we're just dangling on strings played by whoever pulls tightest."

Pete was right. Soon after she had come here Rose had found out that there hadn't been a stable government since the Cybermen attack in 2007. Because so many prominent members of the larger parties had been killed, smaller parties had taken a chance and won seats in the election, making it difficult to form a coalition. Four months ago this universe's Harriet Jones had had to step down as president because her coalition had lost its majority, but her successor had brought her back into the cabinet. She was too influential among members of all political parties to ignore her completely. Unfortunately the instability of the government meant that politics followed no clear course, and it was also part of the reason why the zone system hadn't been revoked yet.

"The delegation was led by the Vice President." The audience groaned. Vice President Stanton was well known for his lack of diplomacy, but like Harriet he was very influential. "Harriet Jones wanted to bring us in, but the President ignored her. The meeting took place this morning." Mickey paused. "One hour ago we received another transmission."

He pressed a button on his remote control and another alien appeared on the screen. Unlike the one they had seen on the previous transmission he had very distinctive markings on his head, and his words chilled Rose to the bone. "A member of your delegation has attempted to kill our leader. According to our laws this means his death, and everyone associated with him will suffer the same consequences. We require you to give your consent to their execution in accordance with article seventy-six of the Shadow Proclamation. If you refuse we will consider ourselves at war with your planet. You have forty-eight hours."

~o~o~o~

When the Doctor came back to his senses he found himself on the grating. The console room was almost completely dark, lit only by a faint glow from the time rotor and the status lights on the console, and the hum of the TARDIS was barely noticeable.

He set up and winced slightly. He had a couple of bruises and a quickly developing headache, but that was all. Nothing what a mug of tea wouldn't cure.

A glance to his left told him that Donna was unconscious, but somehow she had managed to hold onto the handle. Although he probably should have anticipated that, he thought wryly, given her stubbornness. He knelt next to her and discovered a few formerly undetected bruises in the process, which resulted in a few muttered curses.

Pushing every other thought aside he methodically scanned Donna with the sonic screwdriver. When the results came up he released a breath he hadn't even realised he'd been holding. She had a few bruises, mostly where her body had banged against the handle, and she would most likely also have a headache when she woke up, but no other injuries.

Since he didn't exactly want to carry her through a ship running on auxiliary power that had only emergency lighting for the time being, he decided to wake her. He was fairly certain that she wouldn't be too happy about the bruises from the crash, making it worse by hitting a corner would be tempting fate. "Donna?"

Her eyelids fluttered and eventually she opened her eyes. "Doctor? What happened?"

"We crashed," he replied matter-of-factly. "You were unconscious. Think you can walk?"

She tried to set up and groaned. "I feel like I've been run over with a lorry. Did you see the plate?"

He smiled briefly and held out his hand. "Let's get you to the infirmary."

~o~o~o~

It took him almost fifteen minutes to run the dermal regenerator over every single bruise Donna had received. Although the device hadn't been designed for this purpose, it was able to repair the damage to the deeper layers of tissue at least partially and lessen the discomfort. That done, the Doctor left a couple of painkillers and a cup of water for her and returned to the console room, not caring about his own bruises.

Donna wouldn't like that he'd just left her in the infirmary, but his ship was more important. There was no telling where they had landed, and without working instruments he couldn't even determine which systems were necessary and which they could do without for a while. He was also certain that the TARDIS had diverted energy from the shielding. He just hoped there was enough left to raise the shields again, because without them the exterior of his TARDIS was exactly what it looked like: A wooden box.

He typed a few commands and the monitor came back to life. He started a diagnosis program to get a more detailed overview of the damages than the status lights could provide, then transferred the navigation controls back to the console and called up the coordinates.

~o~o~o~

When Donna entered the console room the Doctor was staring at one of the monitors in disbelief, his hands gripping the screen as if he wanted to break it in half. "Impossible," he whispered, almost too low to be audible.

Donna circled the column and looked at the screen that showed their surroundings. "That's not Cardiff," she stated.

It seemed he hadn't even realised she was back in the console room until she spoke. He loosened his grip on the monitor and pulled his leather jacket tighter with an unconscious gesture. "No. It's not." His voice was hollow.

"That's all you've got to say, Doctor?"

No answer.

Donna tentatively touched his arm and he turned in her direction. His expression was completely blank, and the emergency lighting in the room made him look truly alien. She had never seen him like this before, not even when he had faced the Racnoss. He looked almost frightened, but there was also something else in his eyes that she didn't even dare to name. For the first time she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

"Doctor? Where are we?" she asked tentatively.

He avoided her eyes when he answered her question. "This is Skaro."


	8. Chapter Seven

**Chapter 7**

Skaro. Planet of the Daleks. No matter how hard he tried, how often he killed them, the Daleks kept coming back, and so did their planet. After what had happened in his seventh life the Doctor had dared to hope that Skaro was gone for good, but the first act of the Time War had proven him wrong.

He opened and closed the fingers of his right hand, subconsciously searching for support that wasn't there. Even thinking about what had happened on this planet during the Time War scared him to death, and now it looked like they were stranded here, at least until he got the dematerialisation circuit working again.

He typed a few commands and stared at the monitor, hoping that just this once the universe would be kind. They might have ended up in a time period before Davros began with his clever little genetic experiment. When the results came up he closed his eyes.

"Doctor!" Donna's voice interrupted his thoughts. He winced at her volume and realised only now that he had ignored her for more than two minutes.

"Yes, Donna?" He knew that he sounded distressed, but he simply couldn't muster the energy for anything else.

"What's the problem?"

The Doctor laughed sardonically. His TARDIS was so severely damaged that he could barely feel her in his mind, not to mention that the shielding was down, and they were stuck on the home planet of the most vicious aliens the universe had ever seen. Problem was definitely the wrong expression. Bloody nightmare would be much more accurate.

He couldn't even begin to tell how much he longed for one of Rose's life-saving hugs. He pulled his leather armour even tighter around him and buried his hands in his pockets. His eyes finally met Donna's. "Skaro is the planet of the Daleks. My people fought a war with them, and we lost," he told her, desperately trying to sound matter-of-factly.

"So these people are…"

He interrupted her ruthlessly, every pretence of composure gone. "The Daleks aren't _people_. They're anything but. They don't have feelings, apart from hate. You can't reason with them and they've got only one objective: Kill every last being in the entire universe that's not like them." He was almost yelling by now. So much about keeping emotions out of this.

Donna staggered back a few steps. "But…"

He knew he was scaring her, but he went on regardless. "There is no 'but', Donna. My _entire_ _planet_ is gone because of them." He took a deep breath to calm himself down. Yelling at Donna wouldn't help. But still… The Daleks had cost him so much, too much. Not only his planet, but ultimately Rose.

Donna was silent for a while. "But what does that mean?" she asked eventually.

"Apart from the fact that they'll kill me on sight?" he asked, the sarcasm back in his voice.

"Well, as you point out repeatedly this is a time machine, right? What if we, I dunno, ended up before they went to war with your people?"

The Doctor shook his head. Unfortunately they were having no such luck. Like Earth, the entire history of this planet was entwined with his, and since his timeline was affected by the Time Lock, so was the timeline of Skaro. That had left a limited number of eras when they could have landed, none of them exactly promising for various reasons. The figures on the monitor had confirmed his worst suspicions.

"Judging by the radiation levels outside, it's been about fifty years since most of this continent suffered the fall-out of a neutron bomb during a war between the two most advanced groups on the planet." Which made it exactly as long since he had failed to prevent the creation of the Daleks, in their timeline, not in his. And he was certainly not going to tell Donna that.

"A neutron bomb? You land us on a planet where we are going die of radiation? Are you insane?"

He really should have anticipated on which part of his statement Donna would focus. "Donna, do you sometimes engage that brain of yours? This is probably the last planet in the entire universe I'd want to set foot on ever again, and you think I landed us here on purpose?" he asked scathingly. He could see that she was getting angrier with every word, but he didn't care. "I was aiming for Cardiff when the TARDIS crashed, in case you hadn't noticed." He buried his hands deeper in his pockets and turned back to the console, a closed-off expression on his face. "I should've known. But I just had to pick another stupid ape…"

"Bloody alien! Don't you dare call me stupid!" she shouted at the top of her voice. "I've got a right to know if I'm gonna die of radiation or not. And if you had that sort of attitude while travelling with Rose I really think she's better off where she is now!"

He turned on his heel, eyes narrowed, and hissed, "Leave Rose out of this, Donna. You've got no idea what you're talking about. And for god's sake, leave me alone."

"Fine," she gave back. "If you really think so, you can drop me on Earth as soon as possible." She gave him a long glance, straightened her shoulders and left the console room without another word.

He watched her go, then buried himself under the console, telling himself that rerouting a couple of connections would reduce the time the diagnostic scan needed to complete. He had always been good at lying to himself. For more than ten minutes he just lay there, stared at the wires and tried to pull himself together. Eventually he heard Donna coming back.

"Here, you great lump," she said, nudging his thigh with her shoe. "Have a cuppa. Not that you deserve it."

He sat up and looked at her warily, but took the mug she was handing him. "You sure you're not going to poison me?" he asked, a forced smile playing around his lips.

"Nah, why would I do that? At least not before you got us off this bloody planet. Besides, Rose would probably kill me if I didn't keep you in one piece." She grinned at him.

"So it's all just self-preservation?"

"Of course. You didn't think I'd pamper you because of your sunny personality, did you?"

This time his grin was a tiny bit more genuine. "Hand me a spanner?"

She looked around in the console room until she discovered the tool and placed it in his hand.

The Doctor deposited the mug on the grating next to him and vanished under the console again, only to reappear moments later. "Donna?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

~o~o~o~

Eventually Pete broke the silence that had filled the room after the ultimatum they had just received. "Was that all they transmitted? That doesn't even make sense! Why would a member of our delegation try to kill their leader?"

Emily Livingston, who was responsible for electronic reconnaissance and the IT department, was the first who answered. "I think they're just looking for a reason to invade. Everything else simply doesn't make sense."

Rose knew she only was here because Pete wanted her to be present. Low ranking field agents like her normally had to wait for the general briefing. It would have been wiser to hold back, but she'd never been exactly diplomatic. Rationally she knew she'd get in trouble but she didn't care. Some things were more important. So she blurted out, "That doesn't make sense either."

Eight people faced her. Rose suppressed the urge to fidget under their scrutiny.

"What is _she_ doing here?" Matthew Powell, the head of biological research and xenobiology, asked Pete acridly. It seemed he hadn't even noticed her before, probably because his ego kept getting in his way, Rose thought. "It's bad enough that you give her a job here, but as it looks we're on the brink of an invasion. We really don't need unqualified comments from someone who'd be better off painting her nails!"

"You noticed!" she replied sweetly. "I was wondering if the colour really suited me. What do you think? Oh well, I'll have to change it anyway. Mauve's the colour for impending invasions this season." She grinned at Mickey, who had to cover a laugh with a fake cough. Then she became serious again and faced Pete. "Seriously, this doesn't make sense. Why would they need to manufacture an excuse for an invasion, let alone send a message first?"

"Go on." Pete said, and Terrence Gold sent her an encouraging smile. At least her supervisor didn't think she was just a society girl.

Bloody tabloids. On the very rare occasion she went somewhere else than just to the pub around the corner after work she would find a juicy story of her newest 'escapades' in the papers. Hugging someone meant she had an affair, drinking a glass or two meant she was on a bender and wearing comfortable clothes meant she was pregnant. That logic completely escaped her. And it certainly didn't help that people like Matthew Powell seemed to believe in such reports, especially since they should know better.

"First let's assume that Emily is right and they are using this as an excuse. Why would they do that?" Rose asked the people in the conference room.

"They're aliens," Powell said dismissively. "We don't know what's going on in their head. They don't feel like us."

"If you really think that you've definitely got the wrong job!" It came out as a reflex. Inwardly she winced as soon as she had spoken the words, but she held Powell's gaze evenly. Judging by his glare she had made an enemy. Oh well, couldn't be helped. She just couldn't stand people with that sort of attitude. "From my experience it's mostly just the package that differs, and sometimes not even that. Apart from a few exceptions, and yes, those are including the Cybermen, they're not so different."

"And you would know that because..."

"I've travelled a lot." That was one way to put it. "If they wanted to invade they could have done so without putting us on red alert first."

"Yeah, but why would a member of our delegation try to kill one of them? That doesn't make sense either," Jane reasoned.

"Right. But at the moment we don't know what happened there. It could be just a cultural misunderstanding." That sort of thing happened much more often than she wanted to think about. Just look at those alien tourists last month. They had honestly believed that humans had other people for Christmas dinner instead of a turkey.

"And what do you suggest we should do?" Powell asked condescendingly.

Rose smiled. "We could always ask them what happened."

He looked at her as if he thought that she owned no more than three working brain cells. "Are you serious?" he asked incredulously. Another cough from the other side of the conference room told her that Mickey had to cover yet another laugh. Powell turned his glare at him.

"Matt, you saw the video," Pete said, before anyone else could voice their opinion. "If we don't find a solution quickly we'll have a war on our hands in less than forty-six hours. And this planet, let alone this country, can't afford that. We're still suffering from the aftermath of the Cybermen. At the moment we're not ruling out any possibility, and if it helps us gain information I don't see what's wrong with Rose's suggestion."

"You're only saying that because she's your daughter."

"No, I'm not. I'm supporting Rose because what she said was reasonable." He turned to Terrence. "I want you and Rose to get in contact with the aliens. Find out as much as you can about what happened on their ship. If they let you aboard I also want an assessment of their weaponry, if possible."

Terrence nodded.

"You let _her_ go with him?" Powell jerked his chin in Rose's direction.

This time it was Terrence who answered. "Miss Tyler is a qualified field agent. She wouldn't work for Operatives if she didn't fulfil the requirements. She is fully capable of this task, and she is not xenophobic, which is just as well, because we really can't afford a hostile attitude in this situation. If Pete hadn't assigned her, I would have requested her," he replied coolly.

The director turned his attention to Powell. "Matt, I want you to find out as much about their physiology as possible. If you've got someone who is good at interpreting body language, bring them in, too."

"Oh, finally you acknowledge that I'm here as well. I was already wondering if I was still working for you."

Pete sighed exasperatedly. "Matt, when you for once don't behave like an idiot I actually appreciate your opinion. I'll send you the transmissions, although that's all we've got so far." He turned to Mickey. "I want you and Jake to find out who was a member of this delegation and who assigned them."

Mickey nodded.

"Okay, we'll meet again in two hours. Until then keep me updated."

~o~o~o~

"_Parlez_? Are you serious?" Terrence asked Rose on their way to Communications.

"It's a bit Pirates of the Caribbean, yes, but they mentioned the Shadow Proclamation in their ultimatum. It's worth a shot, Sir."

He shook his head slightly. "I must be insane to even consider this. But if it helps to get the delegation back unharmed..."

Her boss opened the door to the communications centre and requested a confidential conversation with James Reilly, the head of the department. Ten minutes later they had their own communications console in a soundproof room.

Terrence pressed a button and began to speak. "This is the Torchwood Institute calling the Corrivexian fleet. We request _parlez_ in accordance with the Shadow Proclamation." Static silence followed his words. He waited a few minutes and repeated the message. Nothing.

"Do you think…?" Rose never finished her question. A sudden flash of blinding white light caused her to close her eyes instinctively, and she almost lost her footing. When she opened her eyes again she was staring at a metal wall in an almost empty room, feeling lightheaded. She concentrated on a point on the wall and breathed deeply to shake off the dizziness, then looked around. Terrence was leaning against the wall next to the door, looking slightly disoriented.

"How are you, Sir?" she asked.

"I've been better," her boss said, sounding like she felt.

"I'll never get used to transmat beams." She shook her head to get rid of the remaining cobwebs.

"You've done that before?"

"Yeah. The better the building is shielded, the dizzier I get." She shuddered at the memory of the one that had transported her out of the TARDIS into a lethal version of The Weakest Link.

A few seconds later the door slid open and four heavily armed aliens entered the room, pointing weapons at them. "Lay your weapons down," one of them said in the stilted, over-enunciated tone an automated translation system would produce. He gestured with his gun to emphasise his point.

Terrence nodded at Rose, and she complied. She knew the Doctor wouldn't like that she was wearing a weapon, but it was Torchwood policy for field agents, and she had discovered that she liked the training. The way she had to concentrate on her breathing was almost meditative and cleared her mind. As a result she had become quite good, although she still hoped that she would never have to use her gun in earnest.

Her boss copied her motions and raised his hands. "We request an audience with your leader."

~o~o~o~

Rose wasn't entirely certain but the alien in front of her seemed to be the one they had seen on the second transmission. She guessed that he was probably a high ranking military officer, not the leader of the delegation. They wouldn't risk him a second time.

The Corrivex regarded them for a couple of minutes in silence before he spoke. "I am the commander of this consular ship. You invoked the right of _parlez_. We will hear you."

Like the alien that had met them earlier, his words sounded as if generated by an automatic translator. Having had the TARDIS translating for her, it always took Rose some time to get used to alien translation programmes. The speech pattern sounded weird, and the risk of unintentional misunderstandings was much higher.

Terrence bowed his head slightly. "We represent the Torchwood Institute. Our government asked us to negotiate the fate of our delegation," he said by means of introduction, but since the Corrivex hadn't given a name he didn't give theirs either. It was part of the Torchwood policy for First Contact, although Rose thought it was rather stupid. But she had promised Pete that she would stick to the rules, and she did. At least most of the time, and only until she came across one that was simply _wrong_.

The alien stared at Terrence expressionlessly. "There is nothing to negotiate. Their lives are forfeit."

Terrence stared back, without giving any indication that he had acknowledged the commander's words or the meaning behind them. "You asked us to give our consent to the execution of our entire delegation. We respect your laws, but we ask ours to be respected as well." He paused.

The commander nodded slowly. "Go on."

"Before we can give you an answer to your request we would like to review the evidence that led to the verdict against our delegation."

The alien was silent for about half a minute. "Granted."

~o~o~o~

The Corrivex they had met first took them to an empty room. "We will bring the evidence here," he said and left.

Ten minutes later he returned, followed by two other aliens who were carrying boxes and what looked like two sets of advanced video equipment. "These are the recorded statements of the witnesses and surveillance tapes from the conference room," he explained. "If you plug the players into these sockets the translator will convert the statements for you." He showed them how to operate the system and left them alone.

Terrence took a seat and put the first tape with witness statements into the player. "I'll take the statements, you take the CCTV tapes."

Rose was almost forty minutes into the tapes when her breath caught. "Sir, you've got to see this," she said, almost not recognising her voice. He came over, and she played the scene again.

"If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it," Terrence said eventually. "I knew the Vice President was an idiot, but why would he _do_ something like that?"

Rose wasn't convinced. "I dunno, something about this doesn't add up. It just feels _wrong_. Let me watch it again." She returned to the scene she had bookmarked earlier and played the sequence again. "See?"

"What do you mean?"

"The Vice President. The way he moves… It's almost as if he had to _think_ about every single move. Or as if someone else was directing his motions."

"Maybe he's just nervous," Terrence suggested.

"No, I don't think that's it, Sir. I mean, he's the Vice President. All things considered, this isn't any different from meeting people with a completely different cultural background, and he's met aliens before. Why should he be nervous?"

"But what else could it be? Do you think he has been forced?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure, but it's possible. And that would mean he's innocent." A smile lit up her face. "We could get them back!"

"Rose, I'm not ruling this out, but I think we need more to convince the Corrivex than just your gut feeling. Besides, we don't even know that they would reverse a verdict."

Rose nodded slowly. "What about the witness statements?"

"Nothing yet."

"Can I help you, Sir?"

"Sure."

Rose had only just put a tape into her player when a sound like distant thunder rolled through the ship, and the floor trembled briefly. "What was that?" she asked.

"Sounded like an explosion, a few decks below us," Terrence gave back, getting up. He hadn't even finished the motion when another group of heavily armed Corrivex entered the room.

"You are under arrest," the leader said, pointing a gun at them.

Somehow Rose wasn't surprised.

~o~o~o~

Donna cursed colourfully, and the Doctor looked up from the monitor he had been staring at.

"Something wrong?"

"I missed a step and twisted my ankle."

The Doctor considered her appearance. She was looking as if she was dead on her feet. The crash must have been harder on her than he had thought. "Go to bed, Donna," he said.

She glared at him. "Are you trying to send me away again?"

He glared right back. "You've been injured, and it won't do us any good if you manage to break your neck by falling into a hole in the grating, just because you're too stubborn to go to sleep when you're tired."

"It won't do _us_ any good?" she repeated, a merry twinkle in her eyes. "I thought we were talking about _my_ neck?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Well, I thought the connection was obvious. I'd be the one who'd have to tell your folks. And I don't do families. Besides, what would I do without your tea?"

"Oi! If you think I'm only here to make tea…" she protested, interrupted by a huge yawn.

The Doctor gave her a pointed look.

"Alright, you win," she said, as soon as she had stopped yawning. "I'll go to bed. But no vanishing on me, understood?"

As soon as Donna was gone the Doctor returned his attention to the console. Twenty minutes later he connected the last two wires and pressed a button. The change of a status light told him that the shields were up again, although that didn't solve their other problems.

He leaned against the console, almost trembling with exhaustion. He still needed to repair the dematerialisation circuit and the temporal stabilisers, and according to the diagnosis scan they were lacking Thallium. The TARDIS had detected a source about twenty miles southeast, but one look at the map had told him that just getting there would take him at least one day, and even longer if Donna insisted on tagging along. He somehow doubted that she would stay in the TARDIS willingly, and if he just left her there was no telling where she would end up.

Was it too much to ask for a companion who actually got the entire 'Don't wander off' thing? Sometimes he really missed K-9.

~o~o~o~

The guards led Rose and Terrence to the bridge, where the Corrivexian commander was waiting for them. He glared at them accusatory. "You have caused a bomb explosion in the main engine room that killed seven of our best crewmen and our chief engineer and destroyed our main drive almost completely," he stated.

"No!" Rose protested. "That's not true! Why would we do that? We just want our delegation back unharmed."

"She is right," Terrence added. "We would never do something like this, and certainly not under the pretence of _parlez_. Despite what you might think we are honourable people, too."

The alien considered them for a long time. "There is truth in your words. I believe you." He had only just finished his sentence when one of the deck aides appeared and whispered something in his ear. His greenish skin paled a few shades and the marks on his head became more prominent. He thought for a moment, and finally seemed to have reached a decision. "The explosion was worse than we thought. We are drifting towards the gravitational field of your planet. In less than two hours we will reach the point of no return."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Terrence asked.

"There have been many injuries," the captain answered. "Our medical staff could need reinforcements. I do not suppose you know anything about our technology?"

Rose shook her head. "Just a few basics about star ships in general, and I've only just begun my studies in engineering." Helping the Doctor cobble a few cables together while he was trying to build a Delta wave and handing him tools to repair an ancient, sentient time ship that was probably beyond anything this universe had ever seen didn't really count, she thought.

"That is more than some of our remaining techs know. Besides, the laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe. We would appreciate your help."

Rose bowed her head slightly and decided against telling him that the laws of physics were a lot less universal than he thought. Especially when either Time Lord technology or parallel universes were involved.

He waved a deck aide nearer. "Take her to the engine room and tell the acting chief engineer that she has offered to help."

Then he turned his attention towards Terrence who shrugged. "I'm just a soldier, but I've got basic medical training. Put me where you need me."

~o~o~o~

The engine room looked surprisingly Star Trek in Rose's opinion, but then they all did, on every star ship or space station she had ever visited. She had always wondered why that was. Looking around, she realised that she could actually identify which purposes some of the consoles served. The whole 'If we don't fix it, this power plant/star ship/space station is going to explode/crash/fall into the nearest black hole' thing seemed to have rubbed off on her.

The deck aide introduced her to a Corrivex who had more delicate features than those she had seen so far. "Acting chief engineer, this is one of the humans who came aboard today. She says she has knowledge of our technology and has offered to help." He bowed his head and left.

The engineer regarded her for a few seconds. "What do you know about our technology?" The tone of her voice made it immediately clear that she was a female, although there was no obvious difference in appearance, apart from the more delicate bone structure Rose had already noticed.

"About your technology, nothing really, but I've been on a couple of space ships from other species and I know a few basics. Just tell me what you want me to do."

"The explosion destroyed almost every system that controls our main drive. Right now we are only operating on auxiliary engines. We have to restart the main drive before we get drawn too deep into the gravitational field, because otherwise we will not be able to reach escape velocity in time to avoid atmospheric entry." The engineer stared at her intently, emphasising her next words. "This ship was built for deep space exploration, not for atmospheric flight."

Rose understood. A shiver ran down her spine. "The ship would burn up as soon as you enter the atmosphere," she concluded. "What can I do to help?"

"We will restart the engines at the latest possible moment before atmospheric entry, to give us time for repairs. That means we will have to use a different fuel mix, to compensate for the difference in atmospheric pressure. Do you know how to read schematics?"

"Yes." Who would have thought that her attempts to figure out the dimension jumpers would come in handy that quickly?

The engineer handed her a tablet computer. "Our computerised fuel control system is gone, and we do not have the time to replace it. We have to change the configuration manually. I already calculated the correct values, and I want you to recalibrate the system accordingly. That would be on that console." She pointed. "Change the plug-in boards, so they fit the schematics."

Rose looked at the plans carefully, asked a few questions to make sure that she understood, then walked over to the console. She opened the first panel and set to work, systematically switching board after board according to the schematics. She worked slowly, double-checking everything she did, knowing that any mistake could kill them. Almost half an hour later she finally closed the last panel and returned to the engineer.

"Anything else I can do?" she asked.

For more than an hour Rose helped with the repairs, too busy to even notice how time went by. Eventually the small group of crewmen and the other remaining engineers gathered around the acting chief engineer, who told the Corrivex to man the consoles, occasionally shouting commands. Slowly the engine room came to life, the status lights on the consoles lighting up. The low hum of electricity filled the room, although the almost imperceptible vibrations of the engines were still missing.

Having not received a specific task Rose stayed where she was, trying to keep out of the way. She glanced at her watch. Twelve minutes until atmospheric entry.

The acting chief engineer typed a few commands, then her hand hovered above a button for two or three seconds. She took a deep breath and pressed the button.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

_The acting chief engineer typed a few commands, then her hand hovered above a button for two or three seconds. She took a deep breath and pressed the button._

Nothing happened.

The engineer muttered what could only be a curse, then yelled a question at one of her colleagues.

"The plasma converters are fine," the crewman gave back.

"And what about the fuel relays?"

"On-line."

Looking at one of the technicians, the engineer ordered, "Check the wires connecting the capacitors to the power grid."

He vanished and reappeared two minutes later. "Capacitors connected and working," he reported, sounding breathless.

The engineer nodded, turned back to her console and pressed the button again, with the same result.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked.

The chief engineer gave her a short glance, her concentration focused on the monitor in front of her. "The boosters do not have the necessary power to ignite, and without them we cannot start our main drive, but I have no idea what is wrong."

"Something about the current?" Rose suggested tentatively while she tried to remember what her electrical engineering textbooks said.

"Maybe." She typed a few commands and a schematic showed up on the monitor. On seeing it she muttered another curse. "The boosters need alternating current, and the only power source we had in reserve was one that just could generate direct current." She closed her eyes briefly. "We do not have the time to install a DC-to-AC converter."

Rose thought quickly. "How long would you need to have alternating current?"

"If we are very lucky, one change of direction would do."

Rose took a deep breath. "This sounds probably completely silly, but would reversing the polarity of the neutron flow help?"

The engineer stared at her for a moment, an incredulous expression on her face.

"Okay, forget that I said anything," Rose said, blushing.

A smile crept up on the other woman's face. "No! That's a brilliant idea!"

"It is?"

"Yes." She began to enter commands. "If we time it perfectly, it could give us just enough power to launch the boosters, but we have to do it together. Push the button when I say 'now'."

Rose nodded, concentrating on the engineer's actions. After another thirty seconds of programming the alien turned to her, her hand hovering above a key. Their eyes met.

"Ready? Now!" the engineer yelled.

Their hands moved in perfect synch, and suddenly a low rumble filled the room. Rose could feel an almost imperceptible vibration under her feet. The engine was working.

The technicians cheered, while the engineer briefly closed her eyes and Rose sagged against the console in relief.

"Good job, everyone," the other woman said, and it looked as if she was about to continue her speech when she was interrupted by an announcement over the speakers. "Acting chief engineer to the bridge!"

The Corrivex looked at Rose. "You should come with me. You are the one who found the solution, after all. While I…" She paused for a moment and continued, "I found something else. And the commander is not going to like it."

On their way to the bridge Rose was silent. She was a person who loved to get to know new people, and although she acknowledged that it was important to respect other people's customs, she found the set of Torchwood rules for First Contact restricting. It had never done her any harm to just introduce herself. True, that didn't count for the Doctor, but then he tended to piss off a certain type of person on a daily basis, she thought wryly. And the inevitable running that followed had never stopped him.

"My name is Rose," she said eventually.

The engineer regarded her for some time, then said, "We are not supposed to tell our names to people who are not family. Our people believe that knowing a person's real name gives power. But I don't think you mean harm. My mother called me Dusa."

Rose bowed her head, acknowledging the leap of faith it had been for the other woman to tell her. They followed the corridor in companionable silence, until Dusa asked curiously, "How did you know that reversing the polarity of the neutron flow would help?"

Rose shrugged, thoroughly embarrassed. "Actually I had no idea. My…" She hesitated for a moment, wondering what to call the Doctor. Everything she could think of seemed just wrong. He somehow defied definition, especially by human terms, and so did their relationship. She resorted to the only name she had ever known for him, hoping that this wouldn't lead to questions she wasn't ready to answer. "The Doctor told me that he'd done that, and I thought he was making it up." She smiled at the memory.

The engineer looked at her incredulously. "Are you telling me you were just guessing?"

"Basically, yes," Rose admitted, thoroughly embarrassed. This had certainly not been one of her wisest moves, even if it had saved them.

A slow grin crept up on Dusa's face. "Do not worry, I would probably have done the same. My mother always said I took too many chances."

Rose grinned back. "The Doctor thinks I'm jeopardy-friendly, although it's mostly him who gets us in trouble."

"The Doctor? Is that the man who was brought aboard with you?" She paused. "I was in charge of the transmat so I knew."

"No!" God, the thought was embarrassing. "Terrence is my boss. The Doctor is… He's not here," she finished lamely.

Dusa nodded slowly, clearly sensing that this was a topic Rose wasn't keen to discuss. They continued their way in silence.

~o~o~o~

"Acting chief engineer, you saved us," the commander said. "We will honour you appropriately when we return home." Rose saw Dusa bowing her head in acknowledgement. She had slipped away as soon as they had entered the bridge and was now standing next to her boss.

"I wouldn't have been able to do that without the help you sent me, Sir," the engineer gave back. "She deserves as much praise as I do."

The commander turned his attention to Rose. "Thank you," he said, and she bowed her head slightly. Then he returned his gaze to the engineer. "How is our current status?"

She gave him an update and added, "Sir, there is something you should know. I found this when we worked on repairing the main drive." She held up a small disc with rather prominent scorch marks. "The electronic signature hidden in the programming is unmistakable."

He took the disc and inserted it into a reader, studying closely whatever the small monitor showed him. His skin paled so much that the markings on his head appeared almost black. "You're right." He pressed a button on one of the consoles. "Vice commander to the bridge!"His voice was cold.

They waited a few minutes in silence, the room filled with tension. A deck aide whispered something in the commander's ear, and he nodded curtly, his face becoming even more unreadable than it had already been. Eventually the doors leading to the corridor slid open and a Corrivex in formal robes entered the bridge.

"Vice Commander," the commander greeted him. "The crisis has been averted. We are back in orbit."

"Good," the other man gave back, sounding disinterested. "When are you going to execute the delegation?"

"I gave them forty-eight hours. But I do not think that we will wait for an answer any longer."

Rose gasped, and Terrence shot her a look.

"Will we not?" the vice commander asked.

"No." The commander paused. "Because I know what happened and I will put an end to it immediately." He held up the disc. "Do you recognise this?"

The vice commander paled considerably.

"I thought so. A time fuse with your electronic signature. Not only that you forced me to issue an ultimatum to innocent people by manipulating a member of their delegation. No, you also tried to kill everyone on this ship, and possibly even more on the planet below. And what for? So you could limp back home in your little transporter and tell everyone how barbarian those humans were?" he shouted. Then he continued more calmly, but with outmost contempt, "Yes, I know that you spent the last few hours in your private ship. But what I do not know is why you did it, and how you made their Vice President attack our ambassador."

The vice commander pulled himself up to his full height. "Look at you. Always sticking to the rules. Did you not see the reports? The people on this planet have got everything we need. And they are weak. We could just take it. Instead we grovel and ask for breadcrumbs." He snorted. "Manipulating the Vice President was easy, especially since you were so nice and stopped on Gomlib. Their mind control devices are amazing, and so powerful. Placing all those explosives to destroy the main drive was much more complicated." He paused briefly and gave the commander a hateful look. "It would have worked. This ship would have been destroyed, and our planet would have gone to war. Now we have nothing!"

The commander's expression showed disgust. "We are honourable people. We do not declare war without having been attacked first, and we do not manipulate others to reach our goals. Vice Commander, you betrayed every single rule of the Great Charter. You will be tried in accordance with our laws." He pressed a button, and four armed aliens entered the bridge. "Security Team, escort the former Vice Commander to the brig."

Then the commander turned his attention back to Rose and Terrence. "Please take my sincerest apologies for the Vice Commander's actions. Your delegation will be released and we will return you to your planet immediately." His entire demeanour showed his embarrassment.

"Thank you." Terrence bowed his head. "When we return I will suggest that our government enter into negotiations with you about the trade agreement you proposed."

The commander looked at him in astonishment. "Why would you do that?"

"You said it yourself. You are honourable people. Not everyone would have acknowledged such a mistake, when a cover-up would have been so much easier. The least we can do is listen to your suggestions."

The alien bowed.

~o~o~o~

"You're not going to prick me with that thing. What do you think I am? A pin cushion?" Donna protested.

The Doctor grinned at her, waving a hypo spray with a liquid version of the anti-radiation pills he had developed in his fourth life. "You're certainly prickly enough for that."

"Oi!" She swatted his shoulder.

"What was that for?" he asked, rubbing his arm.

"Oh, I think you know. But you're still not giving me an inoculation."

The Doctor sighed exasperatedly. "Donna, I _can_ treat radiation poisoning, but I'd rather you didn't get the symptoms in the first place. Without the inoculation you're staying in the TARDIS."

"But can't we just avoid the area?"

"Donna, did you pay attention during the last couple of weeks? Things don't always go as planned." And he had the dim feeling that they wouldn't this time, either. Not on Skaro. "Besides, this doesn't even have a needle. You won't feel a thing."

"How stupid do you think I am? You're telling me you're going to inoculate me without a needle and that it won't hurt, and you expect me to _believe_ that?"

He rolled his eyes. "Like I said. Take the inoculation or stay here. And in that case I'll tell the TARDIS to keep the doors locked. I really don't fancy another rescue mission on this planet." Especially not after what had happened last time, he thought. "Your choice."

Donna grumbled something incomprehensible, then held out her arm.

~o~o~o~

From a distance the rocks looked like a prehistoric animal that had been almost completely buried under the sand, leaving only the plates arising from its back visible. Coming nearer, the seemingly solid structure dissolved into a collection of enormous rocks, rising separately from each other. Eons ago seismic activity had formed this landscape, leaving the rocks as the only elevation within miles. The Doctor was standing at the edge of the largest rock, observing the rocky wastelands that stretched in front of him, while he waited for Donna to wake up. The sky was cloudless, and the rising sun cast large shadows over the ragged surface. It would be another hot day.

In the south he could see a small ridge of barren mountains, a camp at their foot. He briefly wondered what was going on there, then his eyes wandered on. Eventually he focused on an area that looked as if it had been destroyed by a fire. Nothing grew there, not even the kind of shrubbery that somehow managed to survive almost anywhere. The heat of the nuclear explosion had turned the sand into black glass, and the ground hadn't yet eroded enough to provide an environment where botanical life was possible. Even if the radiation levels had decreased considerably since the explosion, spending large amounts of time in this area still wasn't exactly advisable, though.

The Doctor turned slightly and stared in the direction of the TARDIS, the occasional twitching of his fingers the only indicator of his impatience. This journey had already taken them much longer than expected. Soon after they had left the ship they had discovered that the direct route was almost impassable. The detour had prolonged the journey by nearly ten miles, and they had only reached the Thallium source after more than three days. He had needed another day to collect enough Tallium to get the TARDIS working again, and an additional one to get them to the place where they had spent the night. By his estimation they would need another two days to get back, even if they kept the necessary breaks to a minimum.

He would have woken Donna as soon as the sun had begun to rise, but he knew she needed some time to recover. She was already at her breaking point, and they couldn't afford her collapsing. He'd give her another quarter of an hour, but then they had to go. Something was coming, he could feel it. Although nothing seemed out of the ordinary, his instincts had been yelling at him for hours to get them back to the ship as soon as possible.

With a last look at the horizon he finally left his position on top of the rock and climbed down to the small camp. "Donna? Wake up."

She slowly opened her eyes and muttered something, then her eyes focused on him with a deadly glare.

He shrugged inwardly, unperturbed by her expression. She had wanted to tag along, so she had to live with the consequences. "Come on, Donna. Less than twenty miles left. We'll be back in the TARDIS by tomorrow evening. I know you can do it." It wasn't exactly the St Crispin's Day speech, but it would have to do. He held out a hand.

With a groan she took it and got up. "God, my back is killing me. Give me a minute." She vanished around a spur of rock.

The Doctor began to build a small fireplace out of dry wood he had found earlier, waiting for Donna to return. By the time the tea was ready she still hadn't reappeared. He gave her another three minutes, then got up and went in the most likely direction, looking for her. "Donna?"

No answer.

~o~o~o~

Donna followed the rock face to the small creek the Doctor had discovered the evening before. Every step hurt, despite the comfortable hiking boots the TARDIS had provided. She was exhausted, filthy and wanted a real bed. Although she also wouldn't say no to a cosy little bathroom with a tub, in which she could soak for at least two hours, or a spa.

After he had landed them on Teralix during a full-fledged monsoon, she had guilt-tripped the Doctor into a stay at a five-star spa (which had ended in running nonetheless). But she didn't think that it would work this time, not when it had been her idea to tag along.

For a moment she sat at the brink of the creek, lost in thoughts. Without her the Doctor would have been much faster, he had implied as much. He might even have been back at this point. Hell, they might already have left the planet. Sometimes she really wondered why he had asked her to come with him in the first place. She was just a mouthy temp from Chiswick, after all, only good enough for making tea. With a sigh she opened her toilet bag and began her morning routine, well, as much of her morning routine as was possible in the middle of nowhere. The faster she returned to the small camp, the sooner they could be on their way back to the TARDIS.

She was packing away her tooth brush when she heard a faint noise. She listened for a few seconds, then shrugged it off and continued collecting her stuff. She had only just closed the bag when the noise repeated itself. It sounded almost like a scream. Gathering her bag she got up and followed the creek downstream, occasionally pausing to listen. After a hundred metres she was certain she was going in the right direction. The noises were getting louder, sounding more like words now, but she still couldn't understand what they were saying.

Eventually she reached another rock, lower than the one where they had camped. She carefully glanced around a rock nose, and what she saw caused her to hold her breath. A bunch of aliens that looked suspiciously like pepper pots and three humans in greyish-black uniforms were pointing weapons at a group of nine or ten other humans, three of them children. Well, at least they looked human, although she had learned in the last couple of weeks that outward appearances could be deceiving. Just look at the Doctor, or that trader in medieval London.

What was going on here? The pepper pots seemed to work with the uniformed humans, but why did they threaten the other humanoids? Maybe the Doctor would have an idea, she thought, then a cold voice interrupted her musings. "Raise your hands."

Slowly she followed the order, then turned around. Behind her stood a very young soldier, clad in the same greyish-black uniform the others were wearing, holding a weapon of a kind she had never seen before. He gestured with his gun. "Come on, join your group, or do you need a written invitation, _Thal_?" He sneered the last word.

Donna glared at him, but didn't budge.

He raised an eyebrow in contempt. "Move, if you know what's good for you, scum." He pressed the muzzle of his weapon in her side, touching a spot that was still sensitive from the crash.

Donna barely managed to suppress a scream. "Oi! Sunshine, I don't know who you think I am, but if you don't stop threatening me then you're gonna regret it!"

The soldier didn't even bat an eye. "I would be very careful about my choice of words if I were you, Thal. There's only one punishment for people who are incapable of following orders. Look!"

Donna returned her attention back to the small group of people. In an attempt to get away from the pepper pot aliens one of the adults tried to run. He had made it about thirty metres into the open plane when one of the pepper pots screeched something indistinguishable, the lights on its head flashing rhythmically. Then a beam of greenish light shot out of a protuberance, and the man fell to the ground without a sound.

"No! Oh my god, they killed him!" Donna was horrified.

The soldier shrugged. "Of course they did. He tried to escape."

"That's not a reason!"

He looked at her as if she was nothing more than a bug he'd crush under his boot without a second thought. "That's more than enough of a reason. He's nothing more than a Thal. Like you." Raising his weapon he repeated his earlier command. "Move."

The sudden menace in his voice sent a shiver down her spine. Without another word of protest she turned and followed the rock face towards the small group of people, the soldier behind her.

When she left the shadow cast by the rock nose, Donna paused briefly, trying to adjust to the sunlight.

"Come on, no dawdling, Thal. Our Lords and Masters don't take it kindly if they're kept waiting," the soldier said.

"Your Lords and Masters? The pepper pots?" she asked disbelievingly.

Once again he pressed the weapon into her back, and she winced. "You will show all due respect. And be silent!"

Donna glowered at him, but didn't say anything. Even she could understand a hint. Five minutes later they reached the group of people who had been looking in their direction for some time.

"I have captured another one," the soldier announced. "She tried to hide."

"Oi! I haven't done anything," Donna said. "I don't even know who you are!"

One of the pepper pots turned in her direction, the lights on its head flashing once before it spoke. "The prisoner will be silent. You will obey the Daleks, or you will be exterminated!"

Suddenly Donna was very, very afraid.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor watched the small group of humanoids being herded towards the camp at the foot of the mountains with an inscrutable expression on his face. He made no attempt to hide his presence, even if his figure was clearly visible against the sky as he stood at the top of the rock. The Daleks had taken Donna, and it was his fault. He really should have locked her in the TARDIS. He observed the progress of the group with his binoculars until a small cloud of dust was the last visible indicator of their presence, then he put the device away.

For some time he stared at the open plane without actually seeing anything, his thoughts racing. It would take him at least twenty hours to get to the TARDIS, probably closer to twenty-four, and only if he didn't have to stop for anything. Which included a companion who had to rest occasionally. The longer he thought about it, the clearer it became: Freeing Donna right now was completely out of the question.

He simply couldn't fight off a bunch of pursuing Daleks, protect his companion and get them back to the TARDIS. Not without weapons and not in this terrain. And getting them back was the easy part, given the state the TARDIS was currently in. He needed at least a week, probably closer to two, just to get the most necessary repairs done so they would be able to enter the Vortex. He could count himself lucky if the Daleks didn't detect the ship, because right now the shielding would maybe survive a single Dalek death ray, but never a combined attack.

He stared at the camp for a few more minutes while he made a decision. His eyes were devoid of emotion when he turned and left the rock for the last time. He would repair the TARDIS. He would get Donna back. And then he would deal with the Daleks as he should have done a long time ago.


	10. Chapter Nine

**Chapter 9**

A stone slipped under Donna's boot and she stumbled, but she managed to keep her footing. One of the other women shot her a look. "They'll kill you if you fall."

"Who? The pepper pots or the soldiers?"

"Does it matter? The Daleks and the Kaleds, they're the same," the woman answered, her voice ringing with a mixture of fear and suppressed hate.

"But…"

"Silence!" one of the soldiers bellowed, and one of the Daleks turned his eye stalk in their direction.

The other woman shot her another meaningful glance, and Donna lowered her head. Maybe she would have a chance to get away from them at night after she had rested, but right now she was simply too exhausted to plan. The sun was burning down on them mercilessly and she needed a break, but by the looks of it she wouldn't get one until they reached their destination. When the children hadn't been able to walk any further, the soldiers had forced the adults to carry them, but they hadn't let them slow down. Compared to this, the Doctor's brisk speed seemed almost like a walk in the park. And he had allowed her a break when it was hottest.

The Doctor. He had to know by now that she had vanished. He would come, wouldn't he? He wouldn't just leave her behind. Not on another planet. Or would he? Why would he come for somebody who not only was completely useless, but had also managed to get herself captured? And he had said that he didn't exactly look forward to a rescue mission. So what if…

She stumbled again, cursed and concentrated on the ground in front of her.

~o~o~o~

When they finally reached the camp the soldier had spoken of, Donna was barely able to set one foot in front of the other. It had taken them almost a day to reach their destination, and now the sun was about to set. It was still freaking hot, and she longed for a bit of water. They stopped in front of a Nissen hut and the small group of humanoids huddled in the first shadow they had been allowed the entire day, while one of the soldiers politely knocked at the door. When it opened a distinguished looking humanoid appeared, wearing a uniform decorated with marks that indicated a higher rank.

"General, we rounded up the last group," the soldier reported. "According to our scans all surviving Thals are now inside the camp."

The general gave the small group of people a disinterested look. "Well done, Captain. Send them for processing. We don't want to infest our work force with their germs," he ordered in a clipped voice, then he disappeared back into the building.

The soldiers ushered the small group into another hut that looked slightly less rundown than the rest of the camp, but to Donna's relief the pepper pots stayed where they were. They had been giving her the creeps all day, especially whenever she remembered the Doctor's explanation.

When she crossed the threshold she stopped briefly in surprise. The contrast to the exterior was even greater than the one she had experienced in medieval London. She was standing in a full-fledged medical facility, equipped with instruments that looked partly like those she had seen on shows on the telly and partly like those in the infirmary on the TARDIS. At the other side of the half-darkened room she could see a wooden door. She was contemplating making a run for it, when it opened and a man in a white lab coat appeared.

The soldiers forced them to stand in a line, and the man in the lab coat stepped in front of the first person, a woman of about forty. The scientist ran some sort of scanner over her until the device dinged, then a soldier dragged the woman outside. The man turned his attention towards the next person in the line and repeated the procedure. Eventually he came to a child, a girl of ten or eleven, and the woman Donna had talked to earlier suddenly rushed forward, grabbing the scientist at the arm. "Not my daughter! Do with me whatever you want, but spare her! Don't make her go into the mines! Please! She's so afraid in the dark!"

The scientist gave her a disgusted look, then jerked his chin at one of the soldiers who hit her with the stock of his gun. The woman doubled over, moaning. "Shut up, Thal scum!" the soldier ordered, raising his gun to emphasise his words. The woman fell silent, biting her lips to suppress another moan. She glared at the soldier, and Donna almost shivered at the hate in her gaze.

"Take the girl to the others," the scientist commanded. "And mark the mother for special treatment." Then he returned his attention to the other prisoners.

Donna had no idea what was going on, and truth be told, she didn't want to find out. Right now all she wanted was to get out of here. Maybe she could get through that bloody door on the other side of the room, even if she didn't know what she would find there. It couldn't be worse than what was going on here, could it?

Two 'dings' later the scientist was scanning the man next to her, and she bolted, consequences be damned. She raced through the room and opened the door, only to stop dead as soon as she'd crossed the threshold. She barely registered the even more sophisticated scientific equipment, because her gaze got drawn towards the other side of the room. In the dim light she could see rows upon rows of large glass jars filled with greyish slimy mini-krakens, wailing like babies. Although they looked pretty harmless, their sheer presence filled her with an irrational fear. What _were_ they?

"Daleks in their basic form. The future of our race. They are beautiful, aren't they? Even a Thal like you must acknowledge that," the voice of the scientist said from behind, and Donna jumped.

As soon as she'd found her voice again, she asked with more boldness than she really felt, "Someone hit you over the head, or what? Those are the most disgusting _things_ I've ever seen!"

The scientist ignored her comment and nodded at a soldier to hold her, while he ran the scanner over her. She struggled against the grip, but in vain. The soldier was too strong.

A few seconds later the results came up. "Inconclusive." The scientist considered her appearance and repeated the scan. "Fascinating. You look Thal, but the scanner says you aren't."

"Big surprise," Donna commented sarcastically, trying to hide her fear. "I could've told you if you'd bothered asking."

"But what are you? You aren't Kaled either," he stated, scientific curiosity in his voice. He took a syringe from a table.

"What do you need that for?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly. Bugger. She hadn't wanted him to know how scared she really was, but since the Doctor had told her what Lance had done to her she was afraid of anyone tampering with her body chemistry again. That had been the reason why she had fought the Doctor nail and claw when he'd tried to inoculate her, even if she knew rationally that he only wanted her best. But this was different, the Daleks in the glass jars told her as much.

"Oh, just a short look at your genetic makeup," the scientist said.

"And you can't just ask where I come from?" She was _not_ going to let herself reduce to a trembling coward. She'd given the Racnoss Empress a piece of her mind, for god's sake, she wasn't going to let a needle intimidate her.

"Would you answer?"

She glared at him. "No."

"I thought so." He nodded at the soldier holding her and he straightened her arm, exposing the vein so the scientist could draw blood. He placed the sample in one of the machines on the table and typed a few commands.

A few seconds later the machine dinged and the results of the screening showed up on a monitor. "Interesting," the scientist commented. He pressed a button and seconds later another monitor flickered to life, showing a face with greyish skin and a mark on his forehead that looked almost like a third eye.

"Doctor Gorran," the man screeched, sounding almost like one of the Daleks. "Is the cataloguing complete?"

"Sir, we made a prisoner whose genetic makeup shows that she is neither Thal nor Kaled. I don't know where she came from, but her DNA matches certain receptors of a sample we took from a person associated with the Doctor," the scientist said. "She is definitely not Time Lord, but it is possible that she travelled with him. Her DNA shows traces of a sort of background radiation that is associated with… _time travel_? But that's impossible!"

"The Doctor is an enemy of our species," the man on the monitor declared, ignoring the last few words. "If we have his associate, he will come to us and he will be exterminated!" His voice almost cracked with excitement, then he seemed to calm down again. "Mark her for special treatment, but make sure she isn't sent out with them just yet. We wouldn't want to waste our bait."

"Understood." The scientist switched the monitor off and turned his attention towards the soldier holding Donna. "Take her to the miner's quarters, as Davros ordered. She can work in the kitchen and make herself useful." He paused briefly. "Until the Doctor meets his fate. Then we will find another use for her."

~o~o~o~

Since Donna had first heard the soldier mention mines, she had wondered what it was about them. Ever since she had entered the camp she had looked for obvious signs of mining activities, like shaft towers or spoil piles, but hadn't seen any. When the soldier dragged her to the miner's quarters, she realised why. The entrance to the mines wasn't a shaft but a tunnel built directly into the mountain, looking like the gaping jaws of a predator. The sheer sight was giving her the creeps.

She didn't have to look at it long, though, because the soldier shoved her unceremoniously into a barrack. As soon as her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she came to the conclusion that the definition 'miner's quarters' was blatantly wrong. The room was filled with rather small bunk beds, filled with thin mattresses and threadbare sheets. About half of them were occupied by children between six and fourteen, the other beds were empty. Two or three of the children were staring at her with hollow, empty eyes. The stale smell in the room spoke of hunger and desperation.

Suddenly a siren blared and the children got up slowly, some of them rubbing their eyes with their fists, others groaning. Astonishingly, there wasn't any grumbling about 'five more minutes' or sheets being pulled over heads, but what disturbed Donna most was that the chatter and the dawdling were missing. This was just not right.

The children queued in front of a long counter behind which three women filled bowls with thin soup. On closer look Donna recognised the one that had put up a fight for her daughter earlier, but she couldn't see any of the other adults that had been brought to the camp with her.

The soldier pushed her in the direction of the counter. "Make yourself useful, scum."

Donna turned around and glared at him. "Be careful with the name calling, idiot boy. _You_ are taking orders from megalomaniac pepper pots and Doctor Frankenstein. You really don't wanna know what I think about that."

"Shut it," the soldier sneered. "Or else you'll regret that you've ever been born."

She gave him another glare, but for once she decided to do the wise thing and stepped behind the counter, picked up a soup ladle and turned her attention to the girl in front of her. She could have been not older than ten, but her eyes were old, speaking of terrible things she must have seen. No child should ever have such eyes, Donna decided. When the girl held out her bowl Donna could barely suppress a gasp at seeing how gaunt her arms were, and the boy next to her was in no better condition. She filled the bowl with thin soup and handed it back to the girl. "Here, love." She smiled in a desperate attempt to hold back tears.

Giving Donna one last look the soldier left the hut, shutting the door behind him. The noise that followed sounded like the door was being secured with a large bar.

About twenty minutes later the siren blared again, and the doors opened once more. The children got up, queued once more and marched towards the exit, dropping their bowls into a large box standing next to the door. As soon as the last of them had left the barrack another queue of children came in, covered with dust.

One of the women had introduced herself as Tellian while they had been giving out soup and told Donna that two of her own children were among those in the barrack. Now she was standing next to Donna, soundlessly moving her lips. Eventually the door fell shut, and she said calmly, "Two."

"Two what?" Donna asked.

"Losses."

"What do you mean, losses?"

"They went into the mines this morning, and two of them didn't come back."

"But what does that mean?"

"It means that they didn't come back."

"You sound like a broken record. What. Does. That. Mean?" Donna demanded.

Seeing the expression of the other woman Donna was fairly certain she wouldn't like the answer. She was right. "They're dead."

"They are dead? You're just standing here and telling me that they're dead?"

"What's there to do? It happens. There are cave-ins, or firedamps or they don't work fast enough and the guards shoot them." Tellian still sounded remarkably calm.

Donna blinked a few times, unable to process what she was hearing. Then she exploded. "It happens? What the hell is wrong with you? Have you been brain-washed? They are children! They could have been _your_ children! They shouldn't even be here, let alone the mines, and you tell me that they die? Every day? And you don't do anything about it? God, you make me sick!"

She turned around, stomped over to the box with used dishes and pulled it over to the sink behind the counter, then she began to wash the dishes with passionate fury. If she didn't do something she was likely to wring a neck or two, and she was fairly certain that this wouldn't help her situation.

After a while the woman who had been sent for special treatment earlier came over. She had introduced herself as Serra while they'd been serving soup. Now she picked up a towel and began to dry the dishes. "You're right, we've got to do something," she said grimly. "If I have to die, I won't go like a coward. That's not how my mother raised me." She paused and continued after a few seconds, "You're not from this planet, are you? I know you're not Thal, and if you were Kaled you wouldn't be here."

Donna eyed her warily, uncertain if she really had found an ally, but willing to take the chance. Not that she had much of a choice, anyway. She made a decision and nodded. The scientist had already found out that much anyway.

"I've never met someone from another planet before," Serra said. "My mother did, though. She was in the ministerial guard, back before the Daleks were even created, and then, on the day when everything changed, she met a man called the Doctor. He saved her life, and then he told her she had to fight. She never stopped, until the Daleks killed her."

Donna stared at her in astonishment. "You've heard of the Doctor?"

"Do you know him? Is he here? On Skaro?" the other woman asked, a spark of hope kindling in her eyes.

Something about the other woman told Donna that she could trust her, that this wasn't a trap. Glancing around to make sure she couldn't be overheard, she nodded almost imperceptibly. "He'll come, and he'll stop this," she said with as much conviction as she could muster, keeping her voice low. He would come, wouldn't he? He had to. Although, judging by the condition many of the children were in he'd better hurry.

~o~o~o~

The air was thick with smoke and ash, the atmosphere so polluted he couldn't even see the sky. The Doctor was standing on what had been a wheat field only days ago, before the Daleks had invaded Arcadia, and stared towards the capital. The once proud buildings had been reduced to smouldering monuments of a golden age, fallen to ruins. They had lost, although it had already been too late when he'd arrived. That was the norm these days. Always too late. Not good enough.

He kept his eyes focussed on the burning city, trying to avoid the destruction around him. People were lying dead in the trampled crops around him. People he had come to know in these too short days, learned about their dreams, shared their meals and their small tents. Ulric, who had been a musician in another life and had cheered them up with songs; Dwine, who had wanted nothing more than to finally marry his girlfriend; Reda, who reminded him of Ace with his ability to cook up explosives from almost anything; Stine, the girl that could put the fear of the Eternals into her six older brothers. All gone. Too late. Not good enough.

In an unconscious gesture he straightened the velvet of his jacket, absently noting a new cut and a few burn marks on the fabric. He ran his hands through his hair, as always surprised to find the chestnut curls gone, replaced by a severe soldier's cut he'd given himself months ago and kept ever since. He suspected he wouldn't have the chance to grow them back, and asking the TARDIS to repair the damages to his suit would just be a waste of valuable resources.

With a last glance at the city he turned around to return to his TARDIS. There was nothing left to do. Arcadia was lost, the last bastion between the Dalek fleet and Gallifrey had fallen. It wouldn't be long now. He could feel it, deep inside. He was so tired. He had seen too much, done too much, even without what was going to happen. He had known for months, but he had clung to that tiny spark of hope deep in his hearts, that maybe, somehow he wouldn't have to do it. He would have to return to Gallifrey soon. The end was coming, and he hoped that it would be over for him then, too. His eighth life should be his last.

He had only made a few steps in the direction of the TARDIS when something caught his eyes. A crumpled figure was lying on the ground, clad in a vivid blue hoodie. A light breeze played with strands of shoulder length hair, almost hypnotising him. He couldn't tear his eyes away. None of the people he had met in the last couple of days had had blonde hair and none would even have thought about wearing such bright colours instead of their camouflage suits. Slowly he moved closer and bent down, touching the still warm skin on her hand tentatively before turning the body around.

She looked at if she was sleeping, her eyes closed, her body unmarred by weapons. Dalek death ray, the analytical part of his mind informed him before he fully registered what he was seeing.

~o~o~o~

"_Rose!"_

The Doctor woke with a strangled gasp, crouched under the grating in the console room. His fingers were clutching the sonic screwdriver as if it was the only thing connecting him to reality in a realm of madness. He must have fallen asleep without even noticing, after almost three days of constant work on the TARDIS and the lack of sleep in the previous week.

It had been so real. He could still feel the smoke in his lungs, the light breeze, discern the smell of burnt flesh, almost as if he had been back to Arcadia, reliving events he had seen in his eighth incarnation. So many lives had been lost that day. And then a vision of Rose had inserted itself into the nightmare.

He gripped the sonic harder, feeling the ridges of the metal digging into his skin until he forced himself to let it go. It clattered on the floor, glowing faintly. For almost a minute he stared at his hands and willed them to stop trembling.

He could feel madness lurking in the darkest corners of his mind. It would be so easy to give in, to just let go, stop thinking, stop fighting. But it had been a dream, he reminded himself. Rose was alive, safe in another universe. He had seen her, held her. She was safe. She had to be. Because if she wasn't…

He closed his eyes for a few seconds that stretched into minutes and tried to pull himself together. Eventually he reached for the sonic and began to reconnect the last wires that linked the helmic regulator to the temporal stabilisers. Just one more hour to finish this part of the repairs, then he could focus on the dematerialisation circuit. Unfortunately that meant another four days before he could even begin to think about freeing Donna. Minimum. He hoped that she was still alive. She was far too stubborn to get herself killed just like that. And if he kept telling himself that he might actually believe it.

~o~o~o~

"_Rose!"_

Rose woke slowly, with the dreading feeling that something was very much not right, even if she didn't know what it was. Throwing back the duvet, she padded over to the en suite to get a glass of water. She could have sworn that she had heard the Doctor, although she wondered why she hadn't actually met him this time.

Looking into the mirror she did what she only ever did in the wee hours of the morning: admitting to herself how much she missed him. She hoped that he was alright. Well, as alright as someone could be while leading his lifestyle. Chances were that he had managed to get himself and Donna captured at least twice since she had last seen him. And he called _her_ jeopardy-friendly.

A knock at her bedroom door interrupted her musings. "Rose?" Jackie's voice asked. "Rose? Are you awake? We've got to go to the hospital. Now."

"Mum? Is the baby…?" The question was interrupted by a groan. Rose didn't even bother to finish the sentence. She grabbed a few clothes, dressed quickly and opened the door.

Jackie was leaning against the wall, clutching a bag. Her face was pale.

Rose took her arm. "Where's Pete?"

"Conference in Geneva."

He was not even born yet, but it seemed her little brother had inherited her mother's lack of timing, Rose thought. Almost as soon as Jackie had found out that she was pregnant the doctors had told her that she was suffering from rhesus incompatibility. They had monitored her very carefully, but now it seemed they had run out of luck. Something was wrong, and now the baby was coming much too early. In a month or so Jackie would have moved to London, but now they were in the middle of nowhere, more than forty miles from a hospital equipped to deal with risk pregnancies. "Right. Let's get you into the Jeep."

Rose carefully manoeuvred Jackie down the stairs, every once in a while pausing to let her catch her breath. With the hand that wasn't supporting her mum, she fished her mobile out of her pocket and called the hospital, then Pete.

After what seemed an eternity but couldn't have been more than three minutes they reached the Jeep. She secured Jackie on the passenger seat and started the engine. While she steered the car over the narrow streets, Rose silently cursed the health system in this universe. The money went into the hospitals in the better parts of the larger cities, leaving the rest of the population cut off from state of the art medical care. The NHS had had its own failures, true, but at least there had been minimum standards.

Jackie's voice interrupted her thoughts. "Rose."

She had never heard her mum sound so frightened. Not with the Autons, not with the Slitheen, not when they'd found out what the ghosts had been.

"Yes, Mum?" She would never know how she kept her voice from wavering, but she sounded incredibly calm.

"Rose, I'm bleeding."

Rose cursed again, loudly this time. She stepped on the gas, her eyes fixed on the street, occasionally glancing at the speedometer. The needle hit forty, then fifty. Normally she wouldn't have dared to drive this fast on a street so narrow and especially not with her mum in the car, but she had no choice. She was _not_ going to lose her mum and her baby brother. It just wasn't going to happen.


	11. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

Thirty-five minutes after they had left the mansion and broken more speed limits than Rose could count, she stopped with squealing tyres in front of Albion Hospital. Jackie's gynaecologist, a nurse and two medics were already waiting for them.

During the last few minutes of the drive the contractions had come quicker and with higher intensity, and Jackie was still bleeding. Rose was worried, although she tried her best to keep her voice even while she gave the doctor an update on Jackie's condition.

The medics helped Jackie out of the car and onto a gurney, then rushed her into the building. On their way to the labour ward Rose held Jackie's hand, too worried about her mum to wonder why the layout of the corridors seemed familiar. "Come on, Mum. We're almost there. Everything's gonna be alright," she said, not really certain who she wanted to convince more. She had never seen her mum like this, so frightened, and it was scaring her more than she wanted to admit.

Having reached their destination, the gynaecologist performed a thorough examination, occasionally exchanging glances with the nurse. Something was wrong, Rose was certain of it, but the doctor and the midwife were trying to keep it to themselves. Since panicking wasn't going to help, Rose refrained from asking questions that would only worry her mum, and kept murmuring reassurances to her.

Eventually the doctor seemed to have reached a conclusion. "Mrs Tyler, you will need a C-section," the woman said matter-of-factly.

"Is... the baby...?" Jackie managed before another contraction hit her. She groaned and gripped Rose's hand so hard that it felt like her fingers were going to break. Rose could barely suppress a scream.

"His heart rate is slowing. It's possible that he is reacting to the new medication we gave you last week. This is completely unprecedented. I've never heard of a case like this," the gynaecologist explained. "I don't even know what exactly is happening, but a C-section is the only way to save his life."

"But he's still so small…"

The doctor took her other hand. "Mrs Tyler, I'm not going to lie to you. It's risky. I would be much more optimistic if he was three weeks older. But he will at least have a chance."

Jackie still didn't look convinced. "What if we wait? Just until Pete is here…"

The gynaecologist shook her head. "If we wait much longer, his heart will no longer be able to bear the stress. We don't have a choice."

"But…"

"Do it, Mum. Everything will be fine," Rose interrupted her, squeezing her hand. "Believe me, I know." And somehow she did. Something deep inside that had just woken up told her that it was going to be alright. She didn't even know where this certainty came from, but she knew that she was telling the truth.

Jackie looked at her, taking in her expression, then nodded slowly. "Do it."

The gynaecologist spun into action, giving commands to organise an operating room and to prepare Jackie for the surgery. Five minutes later Rose found herself alone in a waiting area, staring at the doors that had closed behind the gurney with her mum, wondering what was happening.

Eventually the doors opened again and the gynaecologist reappeared. Rose was completely unable to tell how much time had passed. She looked at the woman standing in the door, waiting for her to answer a question she didn't want to ask.

"Ms Tyler, your mother and your little brother are both fighters. They are fine, but only because you got them here so fast. Do you want to see them?"

A smile slowly spread on Rose's face. "Please."

~o~o~o~

_He will come. He has to._

Giving out soup to almost starved children.

_He will come. He has to._

Watching them walk into the mines and wondering if all of them would return.

_He will come. He has to._

Holding a boy while he cried himself into sleep.

_He will come. He has to. _

Donna leant heavily against the counter, thoroughly exhausted. She had been here for four days now. Every day Serra and she had gathered more information about where they were, what was going on, the schedule of the guards, but everything they heard made it abundantly clear that it was next to impossible to escape on their own. Oh, they could try, of course, but that would end at an electrical fence or in front of a Dalek death ray faster than she could type 'bad idea' on a mechanical typewriter.

Four days. Four days without a sign of the Doctor. She didn't know how much longer she could bear this. The mantra that kept repeating itself in her head was about the only thing keeping her upright. Because it was true. He would come. Despite his off-putting demeanour he wouldn't just leave her behind. He would grumble and call her stupid for getting herself into this situation, but he would come. Until then she would do everything in her power to help.

~o~o~o~

When the door to the barrack opened in the afternoon of the sixth day, it came almost as a shock. Apart from the time during the mornings and the evening shift changes the doors were always closed. For once the dark room was lit by sunlight that fell through the entrance, leaving a bright rectangle on the floor. A few seconds nothing else happened. Donna and Serra exchanged glances, not entirely certain what to make of this. Then the perfect rectangle was destroyed by the appearance of the distinctive shadow of a Dalek.

The alien entered the building without a sound, accompanied by four Kaled soldiers. It slowly rolled towards the counter, stopping in front of Donna. It seemed every single person in the entire building was holding their breath.

"You will follow!" the Dalek commanded, for the first time breaking the silence that had descended on the room.

Donna winced, but she didn't move. Enough was enough. This had been going on for far too long. She just couldn't bear it anymore. If the Daleks killed her, then so be it, but she was not going to die like a coward in the dark. "And why would I want to do that?" she asked sarcastically.

"You will obey or you will be exterminated."

She crossed her arms. "And how exactly is that different from what you're planning anyway?"

The Dalek ignored her comment and turned its eyestalk to Serra. "You will follow, too."

Donna exchanged another glance with Serra. She had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, it was not good. This would be the perfect time for the Doctor to show up.

Unfortunately they were fresh out of miracles. Instead of the Doctor appearing in the door frame, one of the Kaleds grabbed her and Serra and dragged them out of the building.

When the sunlight hit her, Donna squinted briefly, but despite the ruthless grip of the soldier she turned towards the glaring sun, enjoying the warmth. She hadn't seen so much light in days.

After a few seconds she tugged at the arm that was pulling her along. "Oi! You! Leave me alone! I can walk on my own, you know!"

The soldier shot her a look of complete disinterest. "You will be silent."

"Or else you'll exterminate me. Yeah, heard that one before," Donna said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. "Your threats would be much more impressive if they were more believable."

The guard raised an eyebrow. "No, we'll shoot your friend," he gave back coolly and waved at the soldier who was holding Serra.

The other man raised his weapon, and Donna relented.

Minutes later the two women found themselves in a prison cell in one of the very few stone buildings. Donna collapsed on the small bed and looked at Serra. "Any idea what's going on?"

The other woman shook her head and opened her mouth to answer, only to be interrupted by a distant scream. After a few seconds the noise repeated itself, and a shiver ran down Donna's spine. She had the dim feeling that they were going to find out what exactly 'special treatment' meant.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor closed the last panel on the console, got up and typed a few commands. Within seconds the last three status lights on the console changed from blue to green. He released a breath and his shoulders sagged in relief. The dematerialisation circuit and the temporal stabilisers were working again, even if it only was for a few short jumps. Then he would need to send them into the Vortex and stay there until his ship had healed completely.

He flipped a few switches, turned a dial and pulled a lever, his face expressionless while the TARDIS dematerialised for the first time in two weeks. For now his course of action was clear. Free Donna and end this. For good.

~o~o~o~

Donna heard the signal that announced the change of shift twice before the door to their cell opened again. Doctor Gorran appeared in the doorframe, accompanied by two soldiers.

"Miss Noble, if you would be so kind to follow us," he said. "There are some questions concerning the Doctor that need answering." He paused briefly. "Yes, Miss Noble, we know you travelled with the Doctor. Thanks to your little friend over there."

Donna looked at Serra who met her gaze without hesitation, then she crossed her arms and turned her attention back to the scientist, staring at him with contempt. "Do you really think I'd fall for that? One of the little wimps in the barrack must have overheard something and told you."

The Kaled feigned surprise. "Oh, very good. But I should have known. The Doctor doesn't travel with fools."

"And you can drop that 'proud teacher' attitude, too. So, get on with it. We wouldn't want your torturer to get bored, would we, Serra?"

"Of course not," the other woman said with cutting irony. "He might actually do something useful and throw himself from the nearest cliff."

"No need for sarcasm, _Thal_!" The scientist spit out the last word. "Remember, we have your daughter, and we could always leave her to the hunters."

Donna felt sick. She had learned fast that being left for the hunters was just an euphemism for being Dalek bait.

The other woman blanched and was silent for a while. "Whatever I do, you're going to kill her anyway, one way or the other," she said eventually, her entire body trembling.

"Serra…" Donna began, but her friend interrupted her, this time sounding stronger. "No. They'd try to use her against me no matter what. They always do this, whenever they find a weakness. And if you give in once…" She straightened. "It doesn't matter. They'll kill us anyway. All of us." She gave the scientist a hard look.

Doctor Gorran met her gaze, then gestured at the guards. "Take them to the interview room."

~o~o~o~

The interview room looked nothing like the one Donna had seen in a police station once or the ones they showed on the telly. It was rather large, with sophisticated electronic equipment lining the greyish walls. Two gurneys were standing in the middle of the room, wires connecting them to the equipment. At the end of each wire was something that looked suspiciously like electrodes. A man in a lab coat was adjusting some settings on the equipment, every once in a while looking something up in a manual. What was missing in the room was a table with chairs. The sick feeling in Donna's gut grew stronger.

"Secure them," Doctor Gorran ordered, and one of the guards dragged Donna over to the left gurney, while the other pulled Serra to the one on the right. Donna struggled against the grip of the soldiers, but to no avail. Within two minutes she was secured on the gurney, and the scientist fastened the electrodes around her head and body.

"So, Miss Noble. Let's talk a bit, shall we?" He smiled at her like a greedy hyena, and Donna had never been so frightened before. "Let's begin with something simple. What are you?" His face conveyed genuine curiosity.

"What do you mean, 'What are you?'" Donna asked, confusion written over her face.

"You travelled with the Doctor but you aren't his species. We have seen your species before, but we weren't able to identify your origin. So, what are you?" he repeated.

After a few seconds of consideration she snapped, "Human." It couldn't hurt to tell him, could it? Without the intergalactic coordinates (or whatever they were called) he could search the entire galaxy for her home planet without ever finding it.

"Very good, Miss Noble. That was easy, wasn't it? And now tell me about the Doctor." He looked her in the eyes.

Donna stared back, not even blinking. "No."

"Let me tell you, Miss Noble, that it is a really bad idea not to answer my questions. Things might get a lot less pleasant than they are now."

Looking down at the belts securing her body and casting a glance towards Serra who was in a similar condition, Donna snorted, but didn't answer.

"As you wish." The scientist nodded at the other man in the lab coat who switched a lever on one of the consoles.

A tingle began to wander over Donna's skin, like crawling ants, and quickly became more and more irritating. She tried to remove the imaginary insects, but she couldn't move a single limb.

"I'm waiting, Miss Noble."

"I said no," Donna gave back. The tingling feeling got stronger, even more unpleasant.

The scientist looked at her as if she was one of the imaginary insects crawling over her skin. "I'm a patient man. You will tell me. Sooner or later. You see, the tingle will increase until it becomes unbearable. And then you'll beg me to listen to everything you've got to tell me, or you'll go insane."

Doctor Gorran turned towards the man standing by the console, and he adjusted one of the controls. Then the scientist turned back to Donna. "Let's try again. Tell me about the Doctor."

"He's an alien," she snapped.

"Thank you, but we already knew that," Doctor Gorran commented sarcastically. "Tell me what he is doing here."

"I don't know!" Donna said, her voice getting louder in an effort to stifle a groan. The tingling was becoming more and more painful.

"Don't lie to me, Miss Noble. You'll regret it!" the scientist threatened.

"But I don't know. He just said that we were going to crash."

At another nod the man in the lab coat adjusted another control, and the tingle changed into the feeling of thousands of needles piercing Donna's skin. It was excruciating, and she could barely suppress a scream.

"I ask you again, why did you come here? The Doctor always has a plan. We know that. So don't think you can fool me into believing you came here without a reason!" he said, his voice rising with every word.

"I already told you, I don't know!" Donna yelled back, unable to hold back longer. The pain was increasing by the second. She writhed against the restraints but still couldn't move.

"Oh, but I think you do," the scientist said, suddenly calm again, and turned to the man in the lab coat. "Turn the machine off and leave us alone."

The man typed a few commands, and the immediate pain stopped, only to be replaced by shaking muscles. Without another word the man left the room. As soon as the door had closed, Doctor Gorran faced Donna with a hard look. "What you've experienced now was only a fraction of the pain this machine can cause. You'll tell me everything you know. Sooner or later. And believe me, we've got time."

With an effort Donna kept her face straight. Even if the pain had stopped she was fairly certain that things would only get worse, and she didn't know how much longer she could bear it.

Then he turned to pull another lever on the console, but his fingers had only just touched the metal when a voice with a distinctive Northern accent said, "I really wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Doctor!" The relief in her voice was evident, but even so Donna would never admit to anybody how close she had come to giving up.

He sent a reassuring glance in her direction but ignored her otherwise, his eyes fixed on the man who was about to pull the lever. "Really, I wouldn't."

The scientist turned his attention towards him. "Doctor! Finally we meet each other. I'd like to say that the pleasure is all mine, but as you can see the moment is most inconvenient." He gestured at Donna and Serra who were still fixed on the gurneys.

The Doctor leant against the wall and crossed his arms. "Admittedly I've got a history when it comes to awful timing, but this I'd call 'just in time'."

The scientist smiled like a hyena once more. "Well, I'd say that's a question of perspective." He moved slowly towards the console, until he could almost touch the metal. "Anyway, why wouldn't I pull the lever?"

"Oh, mostly because the lever will explode a rather impressive amount of Nitro Nine I connected to the life support system in your breeding room." The Doctor was a picture of nonchalance. "Even if Nitro Nine is not the most reliable of explosives, do you really wanna take the risk of destroying an entire generation of your precious Daleks?"

Doctor Gorran looked at the man in leather, and whatever he saw in the Doctor's face seemed to persuade him that he wasn't bluffing. He stepped back from the console. "You know that calling for help is all I have to do to get you arrested, don't you?" he asked casually.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Do you take me for an idiot? Do you really think I'd leave you the opportunity to call one of your little Dalek friends?"

Until now he hadn't even moved, but the power he suddenly exuded and the hatred in his voice made Donna shiver involuntarily. Then he pushed himself away from the wall, crossed the room with three long steps and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the bonds holding Donna.

The shackles released and Donna slowly sat up, rubbing her wrists. Angry red welts were slowly developing on her arms, and she had the feeling they'd hurt like hell later. Right now she was just too angry to feel anything else. Angry at the Daleks, the scientists, the Doctor, herself.

She turned her attention back to the scientist. For more than a minute the sheer presence of the Doctor had been enough to freeze him, but now he tried to move towards the console once more, while the Doctor was releasing Serra from her shackles.

Donna jumped from the gurney, bit back a scream when her aching muscles announced contact with the hard concrete and mounted herself directly in front of the man in the lab coat. "I really wouldn't do this if I were you, sunshine. After the last few days you're not rating high on my personal list of favourite life forms, and you don't want to find out what I do to people I despise."

"I'd listen to her if I were you," the Doctor said from behind, his words accompanied by the clunk of metal on concrete. "She slaps."

Then Serra appeared next to her, her own shackles in her hands. "Let's see how these look on him, shall we, Donna?"

"Sure."

The two women grabbed the man, while the Doctor rewired the console. To what purpose, Donna had no idea. Three minutes later Doctor Gorran was secured on Donna's gurney and the Time Lord reset the last connections. Then the group left the room, leaving the scientist behind without a second glance.

Outside, the Doctor turned to Serra. "In about half an hour I'll start a diversion that'll get the guards away from the barracks. Do you think you can get the children out on your own?"

She nodded. "But what about the children in the mines?"

The Doctor grinned suddenly. "What do you think is the diversion?"


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Warning:** Daleks in the proximity of children. Draw your own conclusions and consider yourself warned.**  
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><p><strong>Chapter Eleven<strong>

Hiding behind a ventilation shaft that led to the mines, the Doctor observed the landscape in front of them. Everything was quiet, and the guards and the single Dalek in front of the barracks looked extremely bored, even if the Doctor was fairly certain that this would change soon.

"So, this is what's gonna happen. The children will be deep in the mines, in an area far from the entrance, but most of them will be near one of the ventilation shafts, if only because the Kaled guards have to breathe, too." His voice dripped with sarcasm on the last part of the sentence.

He paused briefly and looked at Donna. Even if she was exhausted she had made it abundantly clear that she would help him to free the children. "Here's the plan: I go down into the mine and get those children out, you send them into that valley over there. Serra told me that there's a narrow cave at the end of a foot path, that'll give them protection until we end this, then they can hide in the mountains."

Donna looked down the shaft, apparently not entirely convinced that his plan would work. Admittedly he had forgotten, well, _chosen_ not to tell her a few things. The less she knew the more likely he could do what he had to do without her lecturing him about the dangers and the inevitable problems with his plan. At least she didn't give him the odds, like K-9 would have done.

Unfortunately he hadn't taken into account Donna's penchant for pointing out the obvious. "But how are you going to get the children up here? Last time I looked none of them had wings. And it seems the Kaleds conveniently forgot the ladder when they built this shaft."

"Corded ladder," he told her with a triumphant grin and pulled the item in question out of his pocket. A bit of rummaging when he had short-circuited the console in the interrogation room had reminded him of the old corded ladder he had stored there ages ago. He'd completely forgotten that it was there and he certainly wasn't going to tell Donna that he'd already had it when they'd been imprisoned in the Tower. In that case the slap he had received back then would most likely seem like a light summer breeze compared to a tornado.

"How did you fit that in there?" she wanted to know.

He sighed. It seemed he had also forgotten Donna's ability to focus on something mostly unrelated to the task at hand. "Donna, I travel on a ship that's bigger on the inside. You'd think my people would have managed to do that with something as simple as pockets as well."

"But what about the weight? Do you have to carry that, too?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you really wanna discuss the laws of transdimensional pockets now, Donna? Rescue mission, remember? Children in danger?"

"Git," she snapped, her eyes suddenly blazing with a mixture of fury and fear she had suppressed far too long. "I was in that camp for a bloody week! I'll never forget what happened there, the children that died, of hunger, of abuse, of sheer home-sickness. That was the worst. So many of them just gave up, like that little boy a few days ago. He wasn't even eight. He didn't even fight it, just faded away. You don't have to remind me that we have to get them out of here."

Donna turned away from him, wiping her eyes with angry movements. After a few seconds she had calmed down, even if there were still tears standing in her eyes. "Right. Even with your corded ladder it'll take the children some time to get up here. What about the guards in the mines? Won't they suspect anything?"

The Doctor winced. The way Donna had changed the topic was worse than any wild accusation would have been. He'd even prefer the slap, and he was fairly certain he deserved one, although he couldn't see what he could have done differently. At the moment his TARDIS was far too unstable to even try an accurate time jump, so he had had no choice but to move in linear time. Which meant that he had left Donna to the Daleks for over a week.

Instead of doing what he should have done – give Donna the comfort she needed after all she had gone through – he did what he always did: He took her opening and changed the topic. "Nah. The guards will be busy elsewhere..."

Donna nodded slowly while he explained the rest of the plan.

~o~o~o~

The loud thud of a heavy boot on tamped soil told the Doctor that he had reached the bottom of the shaft. It had taken him less than two minutes to reach the ground, much to his own surprise. But then the layout of the mines would most likely follow the deposit of Dalekanium that ran through the mountains like veins, sometimes nearer to and sometimes farther away from the surface. In this case, nearer.

This part of the mines was completely dark and seemed to have been abandoned some time ago, probably because the output of ore had been too low. Which meant that he wouldn't find the children here, but it was also quite unlikely that he would run into a guard anytime soon. He was fairly certain that the children would be working at the end of the drift, away from the entrance, while the most of the guards would spend their time in the older, outer parts of the mines, avoiding the dust and the dirt. At least this was what he was counting on.

From a distance the Doctor could hear the constant sounds of rubble on metal, indicating the direction where he would find the children. He followed the tunnel and tried to get an impression of the layout of the mines. The drift mostly followed the deposits of the Dalekanium, building a maze of intersecting tunnels on more than one level. Whenever a tunnel touched a cave situated on a lower level, there were holes in the rock so he could observe what was happening below without being seen. Most of the caves were empty and some served as storage areas, but there was no sign of the children in the first dozen caves. By the looks of it they were working in only one spot, which would make everything much easier. He kept searching the mine systematically, and finally he found what he was looking for.

More than fifty feet below, children of all ages were digging in the dirt for ore, loading wagons, sending them on their way out. It looked like a coal mine at the height of the industrial revolution on Earth, only worse. Two Daleks were directly beneath him, from above almost hidden by a spur of rock. Their sheer presence intimidated the children, and he could see that they avoided the Daleks as much as possible, almost forming a semicircle around them.

Kaled soldiers were everywhere, pushing the children on. When a boy who could not have been older than ten seemed to slow down, a soldier hit him with the butt of his weapon, cursing him loudly and threatening his friends. The boy tried to move faster, but stumbled over an unevenness, scattering the ore he was carrying, barely managing to stay on his feet. The soldier shoved him once more, and the boy fell on the ground, crying out.

"Get up, scum!" the soldier ordered.

The boy tried to follow, but when he put weight on his left arm he couldn't suppress a scream. He repeated the motion, but he still couldn't get up.

"I'm not saying it again, Thal! Get up!" The soldier raised his weapon, the motion alerting one of the Daleks below, and it turned its eyestalk at the scene.

"I can't! I tried. I really, really did, but I can't! It hurts too much!" the boy sobbed, tears running over his face.

"Then you are no longer useful," the Dalek declared, turning its weapon at the child.

The Doctor leant against the corridor and closed his eyes. He knew what was going to happen, and it was making him sick, but there was nothing he could do without endangering the mission.

The boy sobbed louder. Then the sound was suddenly cut off by the unmistakable sound of a Dalek death ray. Deadly silence settled in the room. Apparently the children didn't even dare to move.

"What are you waiting for? Get back to work, or you'll suffer the consequences, too," one of the Kaled soldiers said coldly, interrupting the silence.

After a few seconds the shuffling of small feet told the Doctor that the children were following the order. He clenched his fists. Too late again, at least for the child that had just died. And how many others had it been since the Kaleds and the Daleks had begun to enslave anyone who didn't share the same genetic make-up? Too many, even if he only took into account this planet's linear timeline.

Deep in the darkest parts of his mind a storm began to build, but he couldn't give in. Not yet. There were still things he had to do first. And that meant that the children would have to wait for a few more minutes, too.

He made his preparations and continued his way through the mines. As he came nearer to the entrance he eventually reached a large cave that was lit by mercury vapour lamps. Several tunnels ended here, but this cave was the only way to the main entrance of the mines. A bottleneck. Perfect.

~o~o~o~

"Stop!"

Serra cursed inwardly. How could she have been so stupid and let herself be discovered before she had even reached the barrack? By a lone soldier? She clutched the wooden club she had picked up earlier and thought quickly. If she could knock the soldier out she still had a chance.

"Drop the club, then turn around," the soldier ordered. "Slowly."

She did what he said. Well, partly. Only she moved fast and she didn't drop the wood in her hands. It hit the soldier's head with a thud and he collapsed, dropping his gun. Without hesitation she restrained him with two cords she found in his pocket, gagged him with his handkerchief and dragged him out of sight. Then she picked up his gun.

When she had almost reached her goal, Serra hid in the shadow of the nissen hut that was nearest to the barrack. Observing the barrack in front of her, she wondered if a disguise would buy her more time. If she dressed as a Kaled… Then she decided that it didn't matter. The guards would recognise her as a Thal anyway, even if she was wearing a Kaled uniform. She needed the Doctor's diversion. Now.

She had barely finished the thought when she heard a sound like distant thunder. Turning her head towards the mountain, she could see faint dust lines rising from the entrance of the mines. Unfortunately the guards in front of the barrack doors and the Dalek accompanying them didn't seem to have noticed that something was going on. Then the noise repeated itself, and this time the Kaled soldiers guarding the barrack stopped and stared at the mountain. When she followed their gazes she could see the reason: A part of the mountain side had simply _vanished_, and it looked like the entrance to the mines had been buried. For a brief moment she closed her eyes, thought about the children in there and desperately hoped that the Doctor knew what he was doing.

Then the loudspeaker system came to life. _"To all Kaled soldiers: Gather at the main entrance to the mines. The Dalek forces will remain where they are. This is not an exercise."_

Without hesitation the guards left their posts. Serra groaned inwardly. The Doctor's plan – if it had been his plan – had failed. There was still a Dalek guarding the barrack, and it – she refused to think about them as living beings – was more than enough to stop her from freeing the children. But she had to try, even if it might cost her own life. For her daughter.

Serra closed her eyes and gathered her courage. Desperately clutching the gun she waited until the Dalek turned its eyestalk in the opposite direction. She crossed the open space between her hiding spot and the Dalek in less than three seconds.

The Dalek swung his head around, turning his eyestalk at her. Without even thinking about it Serra raised her weapon, aimed at the single eye and pulled the trigger, then jumped aside.

The Dalek turned and fired in the direction where she had been moments before, but missed her. Serra raised the gun once more, this time aiming for what looked like a weld joint between the armour protecting the upper part of the Dalek's body. Somehow (and she suspected she was simply lucky) she managed to break the shell, only to freeze in disgust. Something she could only describe as a slimy mini-kraken wired into the machinery became visible on the inside. That had to be what Doctor Gorran had called their basic form, she thought.

The _thing_ inside the shell wailed briefly, then it raised one of its tentacles to manipulate one of the wires. Before it could move its limb more than a few millimetres Serra fired again, aiming at what seemed to be the head of the life form.

For a second she simply stared at the dead Dalek in its protective shell, then she raced to the barrack door and lifted the heavy bar that locked the doors.

Sunlight fell into the dark room in front of her, revealing dozens of faces staring at the entrance in a mixture of shock and astonishment. Then a voice interrupted the silence. "Mummy!"

"Bettan!" Serra spread her arms and her daughter threw herself at her.

"Serra, is that you?" one of the woman in the room asked, still squinting at the bright light. "What happened?"

Serra explained quickly, still enfolding her daughter in her arms. Murmuring filled the room.

"And what do you think we should do now?" asked an older boy, who had always been one of the leaders among the children.

"We can hide in the mountains. The Daleks are not that manoeuvrable in difficult terrain. They'll never catch all of us," she said, trying to sound as optimistic as possible.

The boy nodded slowly, eyes far older than his age suddenly showing hope. "What's your plan?"

Looking at the people in front of her, Serra could see the emotion mirrored on more than one face. She opened her mouth, but before she could answer another woman objected, "But it's dangerous!"

Suddenly Serra was incredibly furious. "Do you really think you're safe here?" she gave back sarcastically. "What do you think the Daleks will do to you in the end? But it's your decision: Come or stay here." She stared at the door for a second, then straightened herself. "We don't have much time. It's only a matter of minutes until a Kaled or a Dalek see the open doors, but now their attention is on the mines. If we're careful we can hide between the huts until we reach the edge of the camp. There's a path near the northern corner that'll lead us into the mountains." She stared at the prisoners intently. "So, what do you say?"

~o~o~o~

The Doctor stopped for a second to clear dust from his leather jacket. Apparently his leftovers of Nitro Nine were of surprisingly good quality, because it seemed he had, well, _slightly_ overestimated the necessary amount. By the looks of it, he'd not only caused a diversion but also nearly managed to bring down the tunnels in this part of the mines. So he every now and then had to clear the way from rubble, and even if it was only a few hundred metres, it took him almost ten minutes to return to the part of the mines where the children were working.

When he finally reached the bottleneck he had discovered earlier, he turned his sonic screwdriver at the time fuse. Five minutes should be enough, he decided.

Two minutes later he reached the ground level of the cave where the children were working. For a second he stood in the entrance, observing the Dickensian nightmare going on there. Nothing had changed, nothing indicated that a child had died here only minutes ago. And the Daleks were still under the spur of rock from which he had watched the events earlier.

The Doctor hid in a cleft, counting down the seconds, waiting for the order he hoped would come.

"_To all Kaled soldiers: Gather at the main entrance to the mines. The Dalek forces will remain where they are. This is not an exercise."_

Thirty seconds later, the Kaled guards passed his hiding spot at a run.

Another ninety seconds later the time fuses did exactly what they were supposed to do. The Nitro Nine exploded right on time – as soon as the soldiers had passed the bottleneck.

And now it was time to do what he had come for.

He entered the cave as if he owned the place, hands buried in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Surprisingly, it took the Daleks almost ten seconds to detect him, but then he suddenly became their centre of attention.

"You will identify yourself," the Dalek standing on the right ordered.

"I'm the Doctor." His voice was like ice. He had decided to skip the warning this time. It wouldn't work anyway.

"Doctor! You are an enemy of the Daleks," the Dalek screeched, the lights on his head blinking. It raised its weapon threateningly, the other Dalek copying the motion. "You will be exterminated!"

"Oh, will I?" he replied coldly. "And how exactly are you gonna do that if I do this?" He took the hand that held the sonic out of his pocket, pressed a button and the bomb he had planted on the spur of rock exploded.

In hindsight, a smaller portion of Nitro Nine would have done nicely this time, too, because not only the spur of rock, but also part of the ceiling came down. The explosion buried the Daleks under an avalanche of rocks, turning them into a pile of scrap metal.

When the dust had partly settled, he turned towards the children, a forced, but hopefully convincing smile on his lips.

"Right. Let's get you out of here."

~o~o~o~

It took almost an hour until the last few children began their ascent. Many of them were too weak to climb the corded ladder in less than five minutes, even if the ropes were strong enough to carry five or six children at a time, so they had to go slow. Fortunately the explosions had been strong enough to hold the Kaleds and, even more important, the Daleks back, although they would know by now that they had an intruder.

Every once in a while the Doctor could faintly hear Donna's voice, providing directions for the children that had reached the top of the shaft. Serra had shown up with her own group of fugitives shortly before he had sent the first few children up, which had solved several organisational problems. Including the fact that they only knew the rough direction of the cave.

Serra had explained the exact position to some of the older children and left them behind as group leaders, then she had led a large group of smaller children to the hiding spot. Now Donna was sending the others after them, in small groups of five to eight children.

Finally it was the turn of the last child, a tiny girl of about seven, to climb the ladder. The girl stared upwards anxiously, tugging on one of her pigtails.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked, kneeling down in front of her.

"Della."

"That's a nice name. So, Della, what do you think about riding on my back?"

The girl looked at him, then nodded, hugging him impulsively.

~o~o~o~

When they had sent the last group of children on their way to the cave, the Doctor turned back to the camp, an indescribable look on his face.

"Come on, Donna. We're not finished yet."

Looking at the Doctor, Donna was fairly certain that he wouldn't give her a chance to rest, even if she asked. "Where are we going?"

"The camp," he replied, in a clipped voice.

"But why?"

"Tying up a couple of loose ends."

"And that are?"

The Doctor was silent.

"Oi, spaceman, I'm talking to you!"

"I'm gonna stop the Daleks. For good."

Donna shivered at the barely disguised hatred in his voice, but she refused to let herself be intimidated. "And how?"

"Donna, what exactly did I say about being quiet when escaping? The same thing applies to sneaking behind enemy lines," the Doctor said scathingly, then paused in an attempt to calm down a bit. "The TARDIS is half a mile that way, if you don't wanna come." He pointed.

"If you think you can just send me away, you've got another think coming!" He was up to something, she was certain. And whatever it was, she didn't think he was in his right mind. She wasn't going to leave him alone while he was in this mood.

"Fine. Then come. But for god's sake, keep quiet," he hissed.

"Fine. But don't think you're off the hook, spaceman!" she hissed back.

They continued their way to the camp in frosty silence, occasionally having to hide from Dalek guards. It seemed the Kaled soldiers were still busy at the mines. After almost ten minutes they finally reached the lab, which was thankfully unguarded, apart from a lone Dalek patrol that vanished around the next corner without noticing them.

The Doctor soniced the door, and they entered the hut, only to find Doctor Gorran inside, playing the role of a nicely wrapped present.

"What are we doing here?" Donna asked.

The Doctor ignored her question and crossed the lab without even looking at the scientist. He opened a door that led to another room filled with electronic equipment and began to adjust settings. Slowly the symbols displayed on the monitors began to change.

"How did you know this was here?" If the Doctor thought he could just ignore her…

"You didn't think I'd walk into a camp full of Daleks without doing some reconnaissance, did you?" he said scathingly.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Her eyes narrowed.

"I really should have locked you in the TARDIS when I had the chance. Would have saved me a lot of trouble," he murmured, without even looking up from the controls.

"Are you saying this is my fault?"

"No, but currently I'm trying to reprogram this machine. One mistake and it could kill us. So would you do me a favour and keep quiet?"

She had been right. He was about to do something dangerous. "No. Not until you've explained to me what this thing will do."

He turned around and looked at her. "Just send this planet back into the stone age."

"And how?"

"This will send an electromagnetic pulse through every electronic system within more than thousand miles."

"What does that mean, Doctor?"

"Every single electronic device on this planet will stop working, including the electronic circuits that keep the Daleks alive. The Dalekanium might protect them to a certain degree, but it's still early enough in their development that they don't have any other shielding, and that'll be enough. The Dalek civilisation ends, here and now." He laid his hand on the controls again.

Did he really mean what he said? Every single electronic device? Because that would mean… "You can't do that, Doctor! You're not just killing the Daleks. You're also killing the Thals and the Kaleds. Oh, not like the Daleks, but do you really think they'll survive long without technology?"

"Do you think I don't know that, Donna? But they are nothing more than walking dead anyway. It won't be long until the Daleks kill them, even their own ancestors."

"But this is wrong!"

"Why?" he replied, sounding almost curious. "Didn't you see what they did?"

Looking into the dark abyss of his eyes scared Donna almost to death, but she held his gaze without wavering. "Yes, Doctor. I was there, remember?" she replied, sounding a lot more calm than she felt. "I've seen those children die. But it's still wrong."

"But I can stop this. Here and now. For good. I could save them, my people. If the Time War never happened…" His eyes conveyed a mixture of plea and madness.

"You can't! You were the one who told me that you couldn't change your past."

He looked at her as if she had just dribbled on her shirt. "That's the point, Donna. I'm a Time Lord. I can. I always could. And there is nothing left to stop me. Nothing. They're all gone. My people, Rose. Gone because of the Daleks. They deserve nothing less."

"Are you listening to yourself? Don't you see what you're doing? This is _wrong_!"

"No, Donna. This is my chance to end it. And I'm gonna take it. Nothing you can say will change my mind."

Donna looked him straight in the eyes, and when she spoke she emphasised every word. "This is wrong, Doctor, and you know it. You've known all along. Rose would tell you the same."

"Don't you dare bring her into this!" His eyes blazed.

She didn't even wince at the fury in his voice. "I'll do it if I have to, if this is the only way to make you see. You've got to stop. Please, Doctor."

"No."

She shivered under the force of this single word, but she didn't budge. "Then answer me a question, Time Lord. Just one. What would Rose say? And if you can tell her what you're planning, that the universe would be a better place if you did this and she would agree, then I'll step aside and let you do it."


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

"_Then answer me a question, Time Lord. Just one. What would Rose say? And if you can tell her what you're planning, that the universe would be a better place if you did this and she would agree, then I'll step aside and let you do it."_

Donna looked at him serenely, waiting for his decision. It would be a matter of seconds to set the avalanche of destruction into motion and she wouldn't even have a snowflake's chance in hell to stop him. But she had called him upon the trust Rose had always placed in him, and so he closed his eyes and concentrated on the tiny golden spark that represented Rose in his mind.

The bond wasn't strong enough yet to contact her directly, not without the TARDIS and especially not across the Void, but he could feel the warmth and compassion he had associated with her right from the beginning, even when she was standing between him and a lone Dalek, defending it against him.

"_What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"_

The words hurt, even more than they had the first time, and worst of all, once again he didn't know how to answer. How could a tiny human render him so constantly speechless without even trying or actually being there?

From the moment he had met her, her hand had been the anchor that had kept him grounded. She had known him less than a month when she had put her life in his hands, not even knowing what he was about to do or what he was capable of. She had believed then that he would do the right thing, a trust he had known he didn't deserve. Not after what he had done, not considering what he had been about to do. He still didn't deserve it, didn't deserve her.

"_Rose…"_

He opened his eyes with a strangled gasp. His shoulders slumped and his hands fell off the controls. Unable to meet Donna's eyes, he stepped back from the console.

"Come." He turned around and left the hut, feeling completely numb. Thankfully the guards and the Daleks were still busy elsewhere, because he was beyond caring.

It took them almost an hour to reach the TARDIS, and he only spoke when absolutely necessary. Once inside, it took him less than a minute to send the ship into the Vortex. Then he left the console room without another word, leaving Donna behind. Two minutes later he collapsed on his bed, too exhausted to even remove his leather jacket.

~o~o~o~

The street was crowded, but he spotted her immediately. Her eyes lit up when she discovered him, and with a few quick steps he crossed the distance between them. For the life of him he wasn't able to determine what exactly he was feeling. He only knew that he needed her. Without conscious thought he pulled her into a tight embrace, clinging to her like a drowning man to a life belt. The sensation of her in his arms was the only thing that would maybe keep him sane.

Her arms came around him and he could feel her warm hand searching for a way under his jumper, caressing the tense muscles on his back. They stood there for a long time, completely ignorant of their surroundings.

Eventually he loosened his grip on her, cupped her face and kissed her with what was more than just a trace of desperation. His tongue begged for entrance, and she opened her mouth to let him in. He deepened the kiss, his tongue gliding against hers, seeking her warmth. Eventually her soft curves melted against his and her eyes fluttered shut.

Slowly he realised that he needed more than this to convince himself that she was alive, that the images he had seen in his dreams were just a figment of his imagination. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, never breaking the kiss. Eventually he let her come up for breath, and when she opened her eyes she gasped in surprise.

Beneath their feet a wide plain covered with marine blue grass stretched for miles, while the lower part of the mountain they were standing on was overgrown with pale blue flowers. The upper part of the mountain was covered with what would have looked like oaks, had it not been for the light blue colour of their leaves. A red orb covered almost a third of the sky, casting a mad light over their surroundings.

A rustling sound startled them and they observed a swarm of bird-like creatures settling down in a tree a few hundred feet away from them.

"Where are we?" Rose asked, her voice betraying that she was unsure what to make of this.

The Doctor kept silent. He didn't even know what had possessed him to take her here. This planet had seen one of the most gruesome acts of the Time War, a genetic bomb that had killed every being whose genetic code had carried a certain receptor. They had simply dissolved into nothing, as if they had never existed. Only their buildings remained, and those animals whose evolutionary development had gone into a different direction. And although this hadn't been meant to happen, the few Time Lords that had been fighting for the sake of the rest of the universe hadn't been able to undo it.

Instead of answering, he just took her hand and led her to a small cabin near the rim of the forest. She followed him inside, and as soon as he had closed the door he began to remove her clothes, occasionally pausing to kiss her.

"Doctor? What happened?" she asked eventually, her voice still calm, although her breath was already quickening.

It was just like Rose to sense that something was wrong. More than once her compassion had been the only thing that stopped him from falling into the abyss of insanity. Not that he was feeling particularly sane at the moment. Now he just needed her, her warmth, her being _Rose_.

Again he ignored her question, concentrating on removing her shirt, revealing a utilitarian white cotton bra. He shrugged out of his leather jacket, ignoring the thud it made when it hit the floor, and searched for the clasp of her bra, while Rose kicked off her shoes and toed off her socks. As soon as he had removed the bra he opened the zip of her jeans, then pushed the garment down along with her knickers, so she could step out of her clothes.

He walked her back to the bed and she lay down, staring at him, her expression an odd mixture of calmness, confusion, worry and desire. With economic movements he got rid of his remaining clothes. For a few seconds he just looked at her, until the need for her overwhelmed him.

Deep inside a small voice told him that this was wrong, that he was using her, but he covered her body with his and entered her without hesitation. She groaned, the sound more painful than aroused, and he paused for a second to look her in the eyes. For the sake of his sanity he wanted to believe that he would stop if she asked him to, but he wasn't sure he could. He waited. She bit her lip, then nodded slowly, and he began to pound into her.

~o~o~o~

Afterwards she held him, his head resting on her breast, her fingers caressing his scalp soothingly. For a long time both of them were silent.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled eventually, his first words since he had discovered her on the street.

"What for?"

He turned to his side, his head propped on his elbow, embarrassment written over his face. "I used you. I shouldn't have..."

She held a finger to his lips to silence him. "Shhh. It was what you needed, and you didn't hurt me. I love you. I would have given this to you no matter what."

If possible his embarrassment deepened. "No, Rose. This is not... You're going to be my bond mate, and I..."

She interrupted him with a brief kiss. "It's okay. Believe me. It is. As long as there will be more foreplay next time," she added with a wry grin.

He avoided her gaze and stared at a point somewhere at the opposite wall.

"Oh, come here." She pulled him nearer and hugged him. Both of them were naked, but this time the embrace was anything but sexual. His body was tense at first, and she ran her hands soothingly over the muscles on his back for some time. Finally he relaxed against her.

"What happened?" she asked eventually, still holding him close. His answer chilled her to the bone.

"Skaro."

Rose stared at him, the implications of his words racing through her mind, but she kept silent. Eventually he would talk. It always took him some time to organise his thoughts while he tried to decide what to tell her and what to keep to himself. Not that it ever worked. As soon as he'd begin to speak he'd tell her almost everything. Still running her hands over his back she waited patiently until he began to talk, almost matter-of-factly, as if he was reciting a report.

"We were on our way to Cardiff when the TARDIS was hit by something. I don't even know what it was. It should have been impossible. She was completely out of control, her temporal stabilisers and the dematerialisation circuit damaged, and she was losing Thallium. Skaro was the only planet with the correct isotope in range, but she was too severely damaged to land us anywhere near the source. It took us more than three days just to get there 'cos we had to avoid being seen." He paused briefly. "We were already on our way back when Donna ran into a bunch of Daleks on their first day out."

It took him more than an hour to tell her what had happened, and he was visibly shaking by the time he came to what had happened in the lab, what he had almost done. Eventually he fell silent.

Oh, Doctor. The first time they'd encountered a Dalek he'd barely held it together. He had got better over time, true, but the facade was brittle. Anything unexpected could shatter it, and this had been much worse than last time. She slowly ran her hands over his back, trying to loosen the tension that had crept back into his muscles while he had spoken.

He raised his head and looked at her. She'd rarely seen his eyes so lifeless.

"I wouldn't have stopped without Donna, and she had to shove you into my face to get me to see. But even so I nearly got her killed. Her, those people, they could all have died because of me. If Donna hadn't stopped me… You really should run from me, Rose, as far and as fast as you can. I'll only destroy you, too."

He freed himself from her arms, got up and paced the room with the suppressed energy of a caged panther, completely ignorant of his lack of clothes.

She had really thought they had got beyond that point. It seemed whatever had happened on Skaro had been an even closer call than she'd thought, and she feared for him. It wouldn't take much more, and he would close himself off completely, like he had been doing when she'd first met him.

She set up and wrapped the blanket around her body. "Doctor, look at me."

He paused for a moment and shot her a glance, but then he averted his eyes again and resumed his pacing.

She got up as well. "Doctor."

When he showed no reaction she simply blocked his way. When she had agreed to bond with him she had known that she was also agreeing to put up with a lot of things, but him trying to push her away was completely out of the question. She was not going to let that happen. Never again. She gripped him at his wrists.

He could have shaken her off easily if he wanted to, but he didn't, even if he avoided her eyes.

"Look at me." Her voice was gentle, but firm.

Eventually he complied. When his eyes locked with hers her breath hitched on the devastation and despair she saw there.

"It's not your fault, Doctor."

"You can't know that." His voice was completely devoid of emotion.

A tiny smile played around her lips. "I know _you_, and that's enough for me. You didn't land the TARDIS on Skaro on purpose, did you?"

"No."

"And you didn't hand over Donna to her fate, did you?"

"No."

"And you did everything in your power to free her and those children, didn't you?"

"Yes," he agreed reluctantly. "Until…"

She interrupted him before he could finish what she already knew he would say. "Then I don't see any reason why this should be your fault. And if you're going to tell me that you are responsible for Donna wandering off you're gonna get a smack," she added in a weak attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

She should have known that it wouldn't work. Not when he was in this mood.

"I should have told her to stay in the TARDIS," he said tunelessly. "Then she wouldn't have spent a week being imprisoned in that camp."

She smiled. "As if that would have worked. From what you told me she isn't exactly a person who would just sit back and watch, and I bet she is as lousy at following rule number one as I am."

"Don't you dare making this her fault," he hissed at her, his eyes narrowing, his body leaning into her personal space.

She refused to be intimidated. This was much too important. "Doctor, that's the point: It's nobody's fault. Not yours, not hers, not mine."

"You weren't even there," he protested.

"No, I wasn't," she acknowledged, but she ventured on. "Doctor, we knew it would be dangerous when we decided to come with you. But we came anyway." It felt weird to include Donna when she didn't even know her, but she was absolutely certain he would have told her about the dangers when he asked her to come with him. Especially after what had happened to herself.

"That's not the point!"

At least he was fighting back now. "Yes, it is, Doctor. It is our life and we get to decide what we do with it. That's what living means. You should know. You're the one who showed me."

She looked at him solemnly, willing him to understand.

"No, Rose. It's not that easy." He freed his arms from her grip and began to pace the room again. "No matter how you look at it, this is my fault. I could have put a stop to it. But I didn't." He cast her a short glance, wondering what she would make of his admission. She didn't move, just listened attentively. He took a deep breath.

"In my forth life the Time Lords sent me on a mission to prevent the creation of the Daleks. I couldn't do it. I knew what they'd do, well, some of it, because I'd already watched it happen, but I still couldn't destroy them. Everything they ever did is my fault. Every being that ever got killed by a Dalek death ray. The entire Time War." He turned around and stared at the wall, although he didn't see it. All he saw was the devastation the Daleks had caused on his home planet when they'd finally broken the barriers and the even greater evil that had come from this.

"Don't you see, Rose? I could've prevented it, but I was arrogant enough to think I knew better than the Time Lords who had sent me there. I thought delaying their development would be enough. I was wrong."

He heard her move, the gentle whisper of the sheet she had wrapped around herself, and then he felt a warm hand slip into his. He wanted to push her away, didn't want to pollute her with the blood that stained his hands, but he craved her warmth too much.

"That you didn't kill them in their cradles or eggs or whatever only tells me that you've got a conscience, and that's one of the many reasons I love you. I know you'd never do anything like that, unless you had absolutely no choice."

Rose paused briefly before she continued, sounding curious, "I really wonder why they gave you that assignment. You're not exactly a person who would carry out an order without thinking, and whoever sent you there should have known that, should have known _you_. I bet you were not that different then, apart from a penchant for multi-coloured scarves." She smiled briefly at a memory of a picture he had shown her. "Besides, it was _their_ decision to declare war on the universe, and don't you tell me that wouldn't have happened if you'd killed them."

He could almost hear the force of an oncoming slap behind her words. To tell the truth, that would have been his reply. She really knew him too well.

She tightened her grip at his hand. "Doctor, believe me, not everything that ever goes wrong in the universe is your fault."

"Oh, Rose." He wrapped her in his arms and buried his head in the nape of her neck, trying to get lost in her scent, wanting to shut out the universe forever. "What do I do without you?"

She had already made it very clear that she would regenerate him herself if he ever put her over the safety of the universe, but sometimes he wondered what he would be capable of just to get her back. If someone offered him a Faustian bargain he would be more than tempted to accept it.

She leaned back to look at him, then she smiled, a bit shakily, but it was warm, genuine and completely _Rose_. "What you always do: Barge into people's lives, blow up their jobs, and save the universe in time for tea."

A barely visible smile played around the corners of his mouth. He rested his chin on her head, and for some time they just stood in the small room, holding onto each other, sharing their warmth.

* * *

><p>AN: Please note that chapter 13 will not be posted here because of its graphic sexual content. You won't miss anything plotwise, but if you want to read it you can find it on my Teaspoon page as soon as it is approved (same username, link can be found on my profile page).


	14. Chapter Fourteen

A/N: Yes, you read that right. She updated ;)

Also, this is indeed chapter 14 (not counting the prologue). I'm not going to put chapter 13 here, because ninety percent of it is pure smut, the rest Nine and Rose talking, and I'm much to busy to write a non-explicit version. Knowledge of chapter 13 is not necessary for the further plot of this story. If you want to read it anyway, you can find the link to my Teaspoon account in my user profile.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Fourteen<strong>

The Doctor should have seen it coming weeks ago; heck, he should have seen it coming directly after Skaro, but he hadn't. He had seen that Donna was still trying to come to terms with what had happened on Skaro, but she hadn't said anything, and he had done what he always did and changed the topic. Well, not so much changed, more like forgotten about it. The TARDIS had still been severely damaged, and the short trip to bring her near the camp had short-circuited a part of the auto-gravity system he hadn't been able to replace easily.

After finally making it off planet they had floated in the Vortex for a week or so, while he had conducted necessary repairs and the TARDIS had begun to heal herself. Then he had brought them to Oloxos Three where he'd tried to buy a new converter for the auto-gravity system and they'd promptly got involved in a full-blown revolution. After that had come Irelene Seven, where he had hoped to acquire a replacement for a new dynamorphic generator, or at least something he could rig up accordingly. Unfortunately they'd run into a king who thought it a deadly offense if another man wore trousers in his presence, followed by the inevitable running for their lives.

All that had taken time, and now Donna was standing in front of him, arms on her hips, and yelling so loudly that she could have given Jackie Tyler a run for her money.

"Three months? You're telling me it has been three months?" she screeched and glared at him accusingly. "I've been travelling with you for three months without as much as talking to my folks? Let alone visiting! Oh my god, they probably think I'm dead or have been abducted by an alien! Wait! I _have_ been abducted by an alien!"

Eventually she had to pause in her tirade for a second to catch some air and he used the opportunity to cut her off. "You might have noticed that we were a bit busy in the last couple of weeks. And like I said before: I don't make a habit of reading people's thoughts, so excuse me if I didn't know what was going on in that head of yours. If you wanted to go home you only had to say the word."

That was only to be expected, he thought. Of course she would want to go home, especially after what he had almost done on Skaro. He sighed inwardly and turned to the console, asking over his shoulder, "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

Donna looked at him as if he had just grown a second head. "Oh, you're a dumbo! I don't want to go home. Just see my family sometime, or just talk to them!"

This time it was his turn to look at Donna as if she had turned lilac all of a sudden. "Humans! Sometimes I wonder what's going on in that brain of yours. Ever heard of the concept of telling somebody something that's bothering you? Someone stole your speech centre? No, can't be, last week you managed to talk us even deeper in trouble than we were already in."

"Oi! How was I to know that commenting on the colour of the king's trousers was implying that I wanted to be a member of his harem? You're supposed to be the tour guide! And you were the one that got us arrested in the first place."

"Damaged ship, remember? We can count ourselves lucky that we made to Irelene Seven, let alone a time period where I could find a replacement for the dynamorphic generator. Without that we might have been stranded anywhere in the universe, so excuse me if my priorities differ from yours."

"That's exactly the point, Doctor: the entire time you were like 'if I don't repair the ship, the entire universe is gonna collapse'. I didn't want to interrupt."

"Donna, you phoning your folks does not exactly stop me from repairing the TARDIS. If I could survive Rose forcing me to tell Jackie that I would fix her dishwasher while I was in the midst of calibrating the navigation system, I can survive overhearing you telling your mum the latest developments in NewEastEnders."

Donna looked confused. "Who's Jackie? And what's NewEastEnders? Wait, this box has a phone?"

"Donna, this is a dimensionally transcendent time ship that looks like a telephone box from the nineteen-fifties gallivanting through time and space. Of course she has a phone!"

"And why wasn't that information part of the info packet?"

"Well, it's not as if I had many people to call, is it?"

"Oh, I knew you were lying when you said you had friends!"

"Oi! I do have friends. I just don't make a habit of handing out my phone number willy-nilly." He trusted that the TARDIS would bring him wherever he was needed without someone having to call him, and he certainly wasn't going to dangle on anyone's string, especially not the people who ran UNIT these days.

"And what does that mean? You've got a phone, but you won't let me use it because someone might get a hold of your number?"

He could almost hear the oncoming slap behind Donna's words. "You've got a mobile, don't you?"

"And what's that to do with the price of tea? A mobile's bloody useless in space. I checked, you know."

He sighed. "Donna, I travel through time and space in a ship that looks like a blue box. One'd think I'd be able to rig up your phone for intergalactial and intertemporal roaming."

"You can rig up my phone for _what_?"

"Donna phone home," he said, indicating quotation marks with his fingers.

"Oi! I'm not stupid!"

"Well, you asked. So, do you want to call your family or not?" he said, extending his hand.

"And who tells me it's still gonna work afterwards?" Donna asked suspiciously. "I mean, you're _still_ repairing the TARDIS, and it's been months since we crashed."

"One, the TARDIS is old; two, it's not like I could make a pit-stop at the next repair shop. Which reminds me. We should go to Cardiff. Soon."

"Cardiff," she said incredulously. "What are we're going to do in Cardiff?"

"What I intended to do before we crashed. Refuel."

"And you can't do a pit-stop somewhere more interesting? Paris? Or maybe Rome? Or a shopping planet?"

"Unless they recently acquired a rift through time and space, nope." He paused briefly. "Last chance. Do you want me to rig up your phone or not?"

"As long as I get free roaming, too. And I expect a visit to a shopping planet after Cardiff."

The Doctor sighed. The things he did for companions.

~o~o~o~

"Sir? Something strange is happening on the Plass," Ianto Jones announced, a slight strain in his voice. For Ianto that equalled almost an emotional outburst.

Captain Jack Harkness hurried over to the line of monitors Ianto was referring to. "What do you mean, something is happening?"

His team member simply pointed at one of the screens.

Jack stared at the monitor disbelievingly for a couple of seconds, unable to look away from the blue box materialising in front of the fountain. Then he spun into action.

"Monitor the blue box," he advised Ianto while he snatched his greatcoat from the railing, where he had deposited it after their last mission, and ignored the questions of his team members. Then he activated the lift that would take him directly to the Plass.

The motion of the lift gave him some time to think. The Doctor. But which one? During the years he had spent on Earth he had seen various versions of him, including an incarnation he was certain was from the future. Hair gel and pinstripes. The very no-nonsense, leather and jeans version he had known would be horrified, he had thought amusedly.

He had always kept his distance. After hearing Rose's story about the Reapers he had decided that he could do without that particular experience. But there was more to it. Whenever he accidently ran into an incarnation of the Doctor and didn't maintain a certain distance, the Doctor retreated himself, as if he was repelled by a very large magnet of identical charge.

After what seemed a much longer ascent than normal, the lift reached the Plass and he stood on the stone for a few brief seconds, protected from any prying eyes by the perception filter. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see a red-headed woman crossing the Plass. As always, it amazed him that the groups of tourists filling the area completely ignored the blue box parked in front of the Water Tower.

His gaze returned to the TARDIS and he wondered what incarnation would leave the ship. His question was answered when the door opened and a tall man in a black leather jacket appeared.

Seeing this incarnation again brought it all back. The last exchange of words with the Daleks, the brief flash of green before everything went black, the rasping pain in his lungs that came with the first breath after he had regained consciousness, the TARDIS dematerialising in front of his eyes, the countless deaths since then. And the anger at the man who had left him there.

The Doctor leant against the doors, his arms folded, his legs crossed at the ankles. The soldier in Jack immediately noticed the tension radiating from the figure in front of him, although to someone who didn't know him quite as well the Doctor would present a picture of nonchalance.

He wondered where Rose was. He was certain that this was after Satellite Five for the Doctor, but was it after Canary Wharf? He had seen her name on the lists, had heard the rumours that the Doctor had been there, but he hadn't looked at the CCTV evidence, although he had access to it. He had thought he couldn't bear to see her, see them again, the family he had had for such a short time, and then watch her die. Yet another death the Doctor was responsible for.

Jack took a deep breath and stepped forward, leaving the protection of the perception filter. With a few quick steps he crossed the distance between the lift and the TARDIS and stopped abruptly about three yards from him.

The Doctor gave him a curt nod. "Jack."

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't introduce my fist to your face," he said through gritted teeth.

The Doctor took a step in his direction and shrugged. "Do whatever you think you have to do. I probably deserve it. But if you want the reason why I left you on Satellite Five, you're wrong."

"Oh, because I'm just a stupid ape who couldn't possibly understand why you left me behind? Or are you going to tell me I was hallucinating when I saw the TARDIS disappearing in front of my eyes?" Jack remarked scathingly.

The blue eyes showed regret and sympathy. "No, Jack. You're _Wrong_."

This time he could hear the capitalised letter. Despite his inclination to stay angry his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "What do you mean, _Wrong_?"

"You're immortal," the Doctor stated.

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed. I've only been killed, like, a dozen times during the last hundred forty years, by almost anything you could imagine, including a bloody _javelin_!" Jack shouted.

The Doctor winced at the sarcasm, then sighed, apparently having reached a decision he didn't like but would carry through regardless. "Jack, I'm not just someone travelling through space and time in a slightly unusual looking ship. I'm a _Time Lord_. I can see time, literally everything that is, was and ever could be. If I want to I can even manipulate it, to a certain degree. For me, time is always in flux. I see possibilities being born and extinguished in seconds. But you, you are a fact. Permanent. Even looking at you is hard for me. I won't lie to you, Jack. When I left you on Satellite Five I had no intention of ever coming back. Every instinct is telling me to run, as fast as I can."

The admission hurt. He had thought they'd been friends, and now the Doctor told him that he couldn't even bear to look at him? "Then why don't you?"

"Because it's not fair to you. It's not your fault."

"Then whose fault is it?" He had spent so many nights wondering why this had happened to him, cursing his fate and the person who had inflicted it upon him. He simply didn't have the patience to wait for an answer anymore.

The answer he got was not the one he expected. "I tried to trick Rose when I sent her home from Satellite Five." The Doctor's lips twitched with humour. "Not one of my wisest moves. I should've known she wouldn't do what I told her. Somehow she persuaded my frankly magnificent and incredibly stubborn time ship to help her."

Even if the Doctor hadn't told him everything yet, what he had said was enough for Jack to reach a conclusion. "_Rose_ did that? But how?"

"She looked into the Time Vortex. For a couple of minutes a single human being had all of time and space at her fingertips, and she used it to rescue us. She wiped out the entire Dalek fleet with a sweep of her hand. Literally. She simply turned them into dust. In all my lives I've never seen anything like this before, Jack." He had a far off look on his face, as if a whole universe of possibilities was being born in front of him.

"A Time Lord with that sort of power would have become a vengeful god, but she was only human. She just couldn't stand you being dead. With another wink of her hand she resurrected you. Even with the power of the Time Vortex at her disposal, everything she did was so human. The only thing she wanted was to keep us safe."

"Us?"

"Jack, you're the brother she never had," the Doctor replied impatiently. "What do you think she would have done? Leave you to rot?" He stared at him like he'd just dribbled on his coat. "But she couldn't control it. She brought you back permanently. The last act of the Time War: Life."

If somebody else had told him he wouldn't have believed it. "Does she know?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I almost lost her that day. Had she given up the power only seconds later she would have died. Even so, she nearly did. The power was almost too much for her heart. I couldn't deal with that and with what you had become. Not at the same time. I'm a coward, Jack, and I was selfish, and so I lied. I told her you were busy rebuilding the Earth." He gave him a wry grin. "Rose is going to kill me for running from you if she ever finds out that I abandoned you."

Jack considered the man in front of him. The Doctor looked different. He couldn't put his finger on it but it was there. He still thought it was after Canary Wharf, and having seen the lists he would have expected the Doctor to be devastated. He clearly wasn't, but he could also sense that there was something else going on, something the Doctor hadn't told him yet.

"Can she change me back?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Jack could read sympathy in his eyes and knew the Time Lord meant it. He was talking to one of the very few beings in the universe who could truly understand what a curse an immortal life could be.

"Where is she?" he asked finally. He really didn't want to dance around the topic of Canary Wharf the entire time.

"You didn't see the lists?"

"Canary Wharf?"

"Yeah." The Doctor's voice sounded surprisingly calm.

"Was she..." Oh gods, please, don't let her have been cyberised. He didn't know if he could stand that. But if she was dead the Doctor would be devastated, like he had been on the Gamestation, during those moments when he'd thought that Rose was dead.

"She's not dead, Jack."

He closed his eyes briefly, thanking gods he had stopped believing in ages ago for their kindness. "Then what happened?"

"Your employer in their unfathomable wisdom decided that it would be a good idea to punch even more holes into the already damaged walls of the Void and let the Cybermen in. Mind you, not the Cybermen from this universe, which would have been bad enough; no, they opened a passage to a parallel world. Not to mention that they had a Void Ship containing the Cult of Skaro and a prison ship full of Daleks tucked away in one of their labs," the Doctor replied sarcastically. "To get rid of them I had to open the Void again. She got sucked into a parallel universe."

"Hey, I had nothing to do with what happened at Canary Wharf," Jack protested. "I didn't even want to see the reports."

"You didn't?"

Jack shook his head. "No Torchwood reports, no CCTV footage, nothing. Not after I had seen her name on the lists. She is the little sister I never had. I've lost so many people I love. I just couldn't bear it. Knowing that she was dead was enough, I didn't need to watch it happen."

The Doctor nodded slowly.

"Why are you here, Doc?" Jack asked eventually.

"I suppose, telling you that I wanted to see you isn't going to work?"

"No." Jack crossed his arms.

"Thought so." The Doctor looked slightly uncomfortable and sighed before he spoke again. "I need your help."

Jack wasn't stupid. There was only one possible reason why the Doctor would show up out of the blue, almost apologise for abandoning him, allow him to hit him and admit that he needed help.

"Let me see if I got this straight: You abandon me on Satellite Five because you want Rose to yourself and now you want my help to get her back?" Jack guessed.

"Pretty much sums it up, yeah," the Doctor agreed.

"And why would I want to do that?"

"Because you're a romantic at heart who can't bear to see two lovers separated by the Void?" the Doctor asked casually.

It took a moment for the words to sink in, then Jack grinned. "You finally got it together!" he shouted gleefully.

"So are you gonna help me?" the Doctor asked grumpily.

"Of course. But only because it's my only chance to find out how you're in bed."

"_What_?" The look on the Doctor's face was priceless.

Jack laughed. "Don't worry, Doc. I don't wanna get into your pants. Mostly because Rose would probably kill me. And it's much easier if I simply ask her."

~o~o~o~

"Please, Rose, for me?"

Rose could still hear her mum asking her if she would attend this Vitex party. Jackie had been nagging her for weeks, and eventually she had given in. She understood that her mum wanted her to be there, to celebrate Pete's and her anniversary. To everyone else this was the foundation day of the Vitex Trust, but she was one of the five people in this universe who knew what the real occasion for the party was, and her mum had told her that she wanted the family to spend the day together, 'family' including Mickey and Jake.

Unfortunately that had led to another bout of motherly advice, or rather, meddling, at the breakfast table.

"You still need a dress, Rose. You can't wear the one with the golden embroidery again, you know that. You're a person of public interest, and people will think you're wearing out last year's fashion, or in this case, things that were in two years ago."

"Mum, I like that dress, and I really don't see why I should stuff my wardrobe with dresses I don't wear anyway." After her last few experiences with paparazzi following Mickey, Jake, and her all over London when they'd wanted nothing else than a few drinks in one of the hip clubs, she'd practically given up on going out, apart from an occasional pint or two in the pub most Torchwood agents visited after wrapping up assignments. Besides, she had the feeling that when she left this universe it would be with nothing but the things she wore at the time, and it would be for good. So stocking her wardrobe with dresses she'd never wear again seemed like a waste of time and money.

"Rose, please. People will talk. They're already asking questions about you never going to Vitex parties. You're supposed to be the Vitex heiress, you've got to act like that!"

"I've never wanted to be the Vitex heiress, mum. If you'd listened to me, I'd just have been a distant cousin or something, and nobody would have been interested in me after a few weeks."

"But you're my daughter, Rose!"

"I know, mum, and I love you. But this isn't who I am, and I don't want to pretend." Keeping up the appearance that she was content with the life she led was hard enough at times; she didn't need to be playing a high society girl on top of that.

Jackie took her hand. "Love, I know you miss the Doctor, and don't think I didn't know that you're still looking for a way back to him. I don't have to like it, because I don't want to lose you; but I know you'll find him one day, or maybe he'll find you. But don't you think he'd want you to live a life in the meantime?"

Rose stared at her for a moment. Could it be that she had forgotten the promise she'd given herself? To have a fantastic life? She'd buried herself in work and her studies, hidden away in the archives, looking for anything that might help her to get back to the Doctor. And somehow along the way she apparently had stopped _living_. How long since she had stopped to watch one of the street artists in front of the County Hall? How long since she had dropped onto a park bench to listen to a bird or watch a sunset?

She took a deep breath. "What do you think of a shopping trip after work tomorrow?"

~o~o~o~

Standing on the staircase and nursing a glass of champagne, Rose observed the guests who had gathered again in small groups after dinner and remembered the last time she had worn a scarlet dress.

After they'd become lovers the Doctor had asked her for a proper date, much to her astonishment, and even promised an evening without running. She hadn't expected him to do something this domestic and had joked that they seemed to be doing it wrong: living together, eventually becoming lovers and _then_ having a proper date, but he had insisted and told her to go to the wardrobe room.

When she had got there, the TARDIS had already laid out a dress: scarlet silk, knee-long with trumpet sleeves and a deep neckline, and with something Rose could only describe as a merry flicker the ship had directed her attention towards the matching ballerina shoes that would allow her to run. She had laughed and donned the dress. Back in the console room, the Doctor had looked at her for a full minute without being able to say something. Then he had taken her arm and led her outside.

He had actually booked a table in a very nice restaurant on Augusta Prime, but unfortunately they'd had an infestation of Treluvian Fireflies who'd tried to take over the entire gastronomy industry on the planet. Of course they'd had to run before they'd even got to the first course. Afterwards he'd tried to apologise, but she'd told him that it wouldn't have been them if there hadn't been any running involved. That night he had finally made love to her without a sign of the desperation that had driven him the times before.

A jostle by a rather large woman she had never seen before brought her out of her reverie.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking for the restrooms." She pressed a hand against her body. "It seems I can't stomach the oysters."

"I know the feeling," Rose said sympathetically. "Go back to the main entrance, then turn into the corridor on the right. It's the first door on the right hand."

"Thank you." Her relief was palpable.

"You're welcome."

Rose let her gaze drift over the guests once more, until she finally discovered the familiar faces of Mickey and Jake, the two other 'family members' Jackie had invited. Since this was supposed to be a formal Vitex dinner, they hadn't been seated at the main table, much to Rose's disappointment, and she had lost them in the crowd afterwards. She observed Mickey talking to one of Pete's business partners, and the man vanished in the direction of the main entrance.

She left her position on the staircase and made her way over to Mickey and Jake, intent on persuading one of them to dance with her. Having brought a new dress for the occasion meant it had to be taken out for a spin, didn't it? And since she was here she might as well have fun.

In coming nearer, she saw yet another man turning to Jake for advice; and if she had seen correctly, he was directed towards the entrance, then right. It stuck her briefly as odd, but she shook the feeling off. When she had reached them she raised an eyebrow at Jake questioningly.

Jake shrugged. "Maybe something wrong with the oysters? This was the third person asking us for the restrooms."

"No," Mickey said. "I had them, too, and I'm feeling well."

Rose grinned. "That could be because you basically eat anything, Mick, including pickled eggs."

Jake mocked vomiting, but then became serious again. "No, seriously, Rose. I saw your mum having oysters, too, and she's fine."

Rose slowly came to the conclusion that something wasn't right. She didn't know what it was, not yet anyway, but something was definitely wrong here. "Jake, have any of the persons you sent to the restrooms come out yet?"

Jake shook his head. "Now you're asking: None of them. Odd."

Slowly the pieces began to form a picture – and Rose got a suspicion. "Mick, can you charm Mrs Jamison out of two or three bottles of vinegar?"

"Sure. But why?"

"Because what's happening here sounds like the Raxacoricofallapatorians all over again."

Mickey and Jake looked at her questioningly. "The what?" they asked in unison.

"Remember the day you hacked into the weapons control of a submarine and fired a cruise missile at 10, Downing Street, Mick?"

Mickey grinned. "Sure. You're thinking it's the aliens with zippers on their heads?"

"I dunno why, but it reminds me of them, yeah."

"And what are we gonna do, Rose?" Jake asked.

"Wanna cause a scandal, Jake?"

"Oh, why not." He grinned at her.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Chapter Fifteen**

The Doctor stared at the monitor, desperately trying to analyse what he was seeing and mostly failing. Seeing the CCTV footage from Torchwood tower brought it all back. He clutched the mug of tea Jack had made during his second review as if it was a lifeline. Rationally he knew it was stupid, but he had caught himself hoping that this time Rose's grip on the lever wouldn't slip, that replaying the events would lead to a different outcome.

He pressed the replay button, his attention focused on the screen that showed footage of the Void Ship and only dimly aware of Jack watching him from the jump seat. Something was off, he was certain of it, even if he couldn't put his finger on it.

He turned around and faced Jack. "You know, Rose asked a couple of very clever questions about the Void."

"So? Wait, when? I wouldn't have thought she'd had the time during the battle."

The Doctor sighed. Not that it really mattered right now, but if he didn't answer Jack's questions the lad would pester him endlessly. "Time Lords have this little trick. If we desire so, we can establish a bond with our beloved ones. It's extremely rare, and it hasn't happened for millennia, but it enables us to meet at a place between dimensions. I've never heard of it working when the partners are in different universes, but with the help of the TARDIS it somehow does."

Jack grinned. "Don't tell me you can have inter-dimensional…"

He had the feeling that Jack was going to say something extremely inappropriate, but whatever it was, the sentence was interrupted when the TARDIS door opened and Donna appeared, her arms full of shopping bags.

"You owe me big time, you know," she said, completely ignoring the other man in the room. "Cardiff is probably the most boring town I've ever been to."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Jack threw in. "At the moment we have a Weevil infestation and last week we had a shape-shifting alien that tried to kill half of my team. And it looks like you found a couple of shops anyway." He glanced at her bags. "Even if there are better lingerie shops than the one you chose."

Donna looked up and down his body appraisingly. "And you are?"

"That, Donna, is Jack Harkness," the Doctor said.

"_Captain_ Jack Harkness." Jack sent Donna a megawatt-smile.

The Doctor recognised the signs immediately. "Stop it, Jack!"

"What? I'm just saying hello."

"I know your hellos, Jack." The Doctor sighed and turned to Donna. "Jack's probably the biggest flirt in the universe." Turning back to Jack he added, "Jack, meet Donna, biggest slap in the universe."

Jack broke into laughter. "You must have made quite an impression on him. Formerly that nickname was reserved for Jackie Tyler."

"Well, he deserved one for getting me imprisoned in the Tower," Donna informed him conspiratorially.

Jack laughed harder. "You did _what_, Doc?"

The Doctor shook his head, wondering if he could get away with accidently getting Jack arrested on Noia Five. The bureaucrats on this planet were the most annoying he had ever come across, and that included the pompous versions on Gallifrey. Noia Five had laws on everything, including flirting. As he had found out the hard way, it was only allowed if one had written permission of the guardian of the woman in question, in triplicate. He had never told Rose, but the lack thereof had been what had got them arrested there, not crossing the street. Although, knowing Jack, he would probably just introduce one of the guards to fifty-first century pheromones and be out of the prison before someone could say Raxacoricofallapatorious.

"Yeah, well, if we could get back to the problem at hand," he grumbled. "And don't call me Doc, Jack!"

"And what exactly is the problem?" Donna asked.

"Getting Rose back, without destroying two universes in the process," Jack informed her.

"You _know_ her?"

Jack grinned. "Met her during the Blitz. She was dangling from a barrage balloon in the middle of an air raid."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The most jeopardy-friendly girl I've ever seen. And since the Doctor wants her back…"

"Yes, I do. And I'd really appreciate it if we could concentrate on that," the Doctor interrupted. He pointed at the monitor still showing a freeze frame of the Void Ship. "Something about this thing is off, but I don't know what it is."

"And what exactly is that thing?" Donna asked. "It just looks like a rather large sphere."

"It's called a Void Ship. Until I'd seen it in the lab I hadn't even thought it was possible. It should have been impossible. But somehow they built one…" He trailed off.

"So what does it do?" If anything, Donna was stubborn. "And who are _they_?"

"The scientists on my planet theorised that a Void Ship would be able to travel through the Void, the emptiness between parallel universes. Most of them didn't think it was possible. _I_ didn't think it was possible until I'd seen it. And I've no idea who _they_ are." He pressed the play button, and the sphere opened, released a group of Daleks and eventually dissolved into thin air.

"But what about the Daleks?" Donna pointed at the screen. If Jack was surprised Donna knew about them, he didn't comment.

"The Daleks? Donna, I've told you before. All they ever wanted was to destroy every race that was not like them." He spit out the words, his eyes never leaving the screen. "They don't have enough imagination to come up with the theory of trans-dimensional travel."

"Well, where did the sphere come from, then?"

The Doctor stared at the monitor. "No idea."

"You said, Rose had asked questions about what happened at Canary Wharf?" Jack threw in.

"Not so much about Canary Wharf, more what had caused the cracks in the other universe. We don't think it's the Cybermen. They have even less imagination than the Daleks. It's a wonder they found a way into the Void in the first place, let alone to this universe, even without Torchwood helping them along."

"Yvonne Hartman was an idiot," Jack said. "But I don't think she did have anything to do with the cracks."

"You're right, Jack, she didn't, at least not with their origin. But I think I know whose fault it is," the Doctor said slowly. "At least I know who made them possible."

"And that is?" Donna asked.

"Me." He was still looking at the monitor, though without actually seeing the scene displayed there. "When I used the Moment to end the Time War, it sent repercussions through time and space, like a shock wave. That must have caused tiny ruptures. But none of them would have been big enough to let something like the Void ship through, until Torchwood in their unfathomable wisdom decided to use the cracks as an energy source."

"Doctor," Donna said slowly, "didn't the trader say something about a shock wave?"

He turned around and stared at her. "Of course. He was displaced in time! I've been stupid."

"Hear, hear." That was Jack.

"Shut it. I'm thinking." He turned back to the console and typed a few commands.

"You're not exactly polite," Donna admonished.

"Jack's not exactly polite either," he gave back distractedly, still typing. A few seconds later long rows of figures replaced the footage of the lab in Torchwood Tower.

"Is that…" Jack suddenly stood next to him.

"That's the function describing the multi-dimensional trajectory of the shock wave I caused when I used the Moment." Another command, and the monitor showed a simulation of the wave. He followed its course, citing some of the various star systems it had hit. "The Denerian star cluster, the Reneb system, Xeriax." He paused. "Why does it ring a bell? Xeriax."

"In the Time Agency I heard stories about the system," Jack threw in. "Some people said it was haunted. No one believed them, but according to the reports I saw, at least two time agents vanished there without a trace, on one of the outer planets. We never found out why."

"Time agents vanished… Time… Wait! That's it! Time vanished!" the Doctor exclaimed, only to meet confused faces.

"How can time vanish?" Donna asked.

"It doesn't. It's a metaphor, Donna. When I was a child, the teachers in the Academy told us that Xeriax was off-limits, because Time didn't work there like anywhere else, that it would feel as if the timelines had evaporated. That must have been a result of the shock wave. No Time Lord with self-preservation instincts would ever go somewhere where their time sense could get confused, and according to the stories we were told that's what happened to an entire group of Time Lords when they visited Xeriax. From what I remember, the Xerian people were able to influence time in a way only a Time Lord normally would be able to, and they were said to have crossed dimensions."

"They crossed dimensions? But how?" Jack asked.

A strange light began to glow the Doctor's eyes. "Let's find out!"

He began to turn knobs and dials, only to be interrupted by his companion just when he was about to loosen the handbrake.

"Doctor, there's one thing I don't get. If the shock wave changed the laws of time or whatever on Xerox, and you are the one who caused it, how can you have heard of the results as a child?"

"Because time is not a straight line, Donna," Jack explained. "Just think of it as…"

"…a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey stuff," the Doctor continued the sentence.

"Wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey?" Jack asked sceptically. "Is that a technical term?"

"Of course!" the Doctor replied indignantly, his hands still at the handbrake. "Are you ready?"

"Wait, Doc! Didn't you say a Time Lord with self-preservation instincts would never go there?"

A manic smile appeared on the Doctor's face. "Ah."

"But…" Jack never got to finish his sentence.

~o~o~o~

Rose Tyler, Vitex heiress, tumbled into the restroom, hair mussed, dress slightly disarranged. Two men were following closely behind, ties loosened, shirts partly unbuttoned. When the door closed behind them, she looked up, taking in the scene in front of her. Several people in various states of undress occupied the room, 'undress' including body suits being removed and revealing an appearance that struck her very Slitheen. A loud fart followed by a complaint about the lack of appropriate compression technology and problems with the gas exchange confirmed her suspicions.

"Looks like the orgy already started without us, boys." With that she straightened, Mickey and Jake taking positions slightly behind and to the side.

"Yeah, but we'll make sure it doesn't end without us!" Mickey drew out two bright red water pistols he'd been hiding in his jacket. "Good thing that Tony leaves his toys everywhere, including the kitchen."

Rose grinned, her eyes never leaving the group of aliens in front of her. "Mum told Pete that Tony wasn't old enough to play with water pistols, but maybe she was wrong."

"State name, species and planet of origin!" Jake said, addressing the alien in front of him that was yielding a dangerous looking weapon. "And intent, while we're at it!"

"And why would I do that?" the being that looked like the spitting image of a Slitheen asked. "You're nothing more than cubs playing at my feet, not even worth being hunted. Do you really think your_ toys_ are going to scare us with toys?" He gestured at the water pistols Mickey was holding.

"You didn't really think we'd fill them with water, did you? That's vinegar essence. Ever seen what acetic acid does to calcium-based species? Not a pretty sight," Rose said.

"I take the risk." He raised his weapon higher, so she was looking down the muzzle. She'd never really liked the view.

"Mate, one unforgettable night I exploded one of your sort in my kitchen with acetic acid. Took me months to get the stain out of the curtains," Mickey said.

"Mick, that's more because you don't know how to operate a washing machine," Jake threw in. "And you're not the only one wearing a weapon." He pulled out two extra-terrestrial looking weapons and passed one to Rose.

She looked at the gun for a moment and recognised the design instantly. "Villengard? You've got a sonic blaster from Villengard?" She felt for a certain switch Jack had once shown her, checked the setting and adjusted it slightly.

"Yeah. We found it on a crash site a few years ago. And the best thing is, the techies improved the energy yield. You can take down an entire battalion of Cybermen with one of these babies without draining the energy cell."

"Hey, why didn't you tell me you had those?" Mickey asked indignantly.

"Because I knew Rose would need a weapon, too."

"Yeah, ever tried to hide a gun under a dress like this?" she asked an alien that looked rather female, despite the really large gun she was holding.

Her opponent nodded sympathetically, only to return to her threatening demeanour.

Jake grinned briefly, his eyes never leaving what seemed to be the leader of the group. "Right, where were we? Oh yes, you were going to tell me what your intentions are."

"Or else we're gonna turn you into alien goo," added Mickey.

"Oh, I don't think so," the leader of the group responded, raising his gun, his finger slowly moving towards the trigger.

Rose didn't hesitate for a second. She aimed the blaster at his hand and pressed the button. He dropped the gun, rubbing the hand that had been holding the weapon with the other.

"That was the lowest stun setting," she said. "Paralyses one limb for a few minutes. The highest blaster setting would turn you into atoms. This is not a game. Tell us name, species and intention."

Her opponent practically growled. "We are the Chaskeen, and your species is going to bring our slave trade business to new prosperity. Celebrities, even if from another planet, reach high prices on Thalor Seven, and politicians sell even better. A few humans are not going to stop us."

Rose sighed theatrically. "Another universe, same difference. It all comes down to money." She paused briefly. "But unfortunately you made a mistake."

"Oh yes, you did. You chose the wrong party to crash," a voice Rose recognised immediately as Pete's interrupted her from behind. She suspected her stepfather had entered the room while she had been busy paralysing the alien. "You really shouldn't have tried to revive your business by intruding on my wedding anniversary. My wife is furious. And you have no idea what it means if Jackie Tyler is furious."

"Yeah, the Doctor is still rubbing his cheek," Rose muttered to herself.

"Well, it's not as if he didn't deserve it," Mickey murmured.

Rose glared at him.

"At this point she wants your heads on her wall," Pete continued, ignoring them, "even if it will ruin my living room. With a bit of luck I can persuade her that photos of your dead bodies in her album will do, too, but I'm making no promises."

"And you'll get our heads by what means exactly?" the leader of the alien group asked, still rubbing his arm. "You'll never be able to get all of us, before the survivors would kill you." He gestured awkwardly, and the aliens raised their weapons at Rose. "One move and we'll shoot your daughter!" Apparently the Chaskeen had done their research.

Pete didn't even blink an eye. "No, you won't." He pressed a button on his watch. "Team One, Team Two, now!"

Suddenly the window in the back of the room shattered and a man in Torchwood combat dress entered the room, followed by another, while the other members of the team covered them from the outside. At the same time the door crashed open and a second Torchwood reaction unit entered the restroom through the door.

"Drop your weapons or we'll shoot!" the commander in charge ordered, while two of his team members shoved Rose, Mickey and Jake into the background.

The Chaskeen leader slowly raised his hands.

Three hours later Rose, Jake, and Mickey sat in Pete's office at the mansion, waiting for him. He had ordered them here as soon as the remaining guests and the last Torchwood agents had left the estate.

Eventually they heard footsteps outside the door, and Pete mumbling something, then he entered the room, closing the door behind him. With four long steps he surrounded his desk and faced them.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" he asked, sounding tired.

"Yes, sir," Jake replied. "We stopped a couple of aliens from selling your guests as slaves."

"No, you didn't! Instead of calling for reinforcements and letting Torchwood handle the situation, you went into a completely unknown and potentially hostile situation armed just with two sonic blasters and two water pistols, of all things!" he shouted. "What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea of the political fall-out you've caused? To the press, and don't tell me you didn't notice the paparazzi, it looked as if Torchwood agents arrested three influential MPs, the Mayor of London and the bleeding Education Secretary."

Outside the door there was a noise, but Pete ignored it and continued, "You can count yourself lucky that I saw you entering the restroom and called the cavalry when I heard what was going on, or you'd be dead right now. They had a bomb, and one of them was working on activating it, when the combat teams stormed the room. Have you never heard of back-up or reconnaissance?"

"Pete, we thought we should take a look, because a few of the guests were behaving weird. We just wanted to find out what was happening before calling in Torchwood," Jake said.

Unfortunately that didn't calm Pete in the slightest. "This was the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard of. If we weren't so short on personnel, I'd fire all of you. You will ride a desk for the next month. At least that should give you the chance to catch up on the paper work you seem to conveniently forget about whenever you finish a mission." He took a breath. "And if something even remotely like this happens ever again, I'll fire you, shortage of agents or not."

In the following silence, Rose could hear footsteps outside the door that eventually receded.

"I'm sorry," she apologised. "We didn't want to ruin your party. Mickey, Mum and I had a run in with this species before, and we thought the vinegar and the sonic weapons would be enough fire power, especially since we weren't even sure what was going on. I mean, it could have just been guests who had eaten something wrong, and calling Torchwood for that would have been overkill."

"Apology accepted." Pete sat down behind his desk and grinned suddenly. "And to be honest, I'm not really mad. That was just for Jacks." He nodded towards the door and the now-quiet hallway beyond. "But you'll still be confined to your desk for the next month."

~o~o~o~

The Doctor glared at his ship. His companions hadn't noticed yet, but for the last twenty minutes the TARDIS had been fighting him tooth and nail, so to speak. She didn't want to land, and she made her opinion known rather thoroughly. But even if she didn't want to land here, he didn't care. If Xeriax and their dimension crossing technology gave him a chance to get Rose back, he would take it, despite the ideas his decidedly stubborn time ship seemed to be having.

Half an hour later, after subsequently cursing her, threatening to fix the chameleon circuit and make her look like a grandfather clock, cursing her, promising to upgrade her navigation system, cursing her, and swearing that he'd been joking about fixing the chameleon circuit, the TARDIS finally relented. Of course that didn't stop her from acting like any annoyed female would have done: she dumped them in an alley that looked decidedly like a junkyard.

As soon as he opened the TARDIS door, the Doctor knew Xeriax was _wrong_, and when he set foot on the planet he knew why. It was as if Time had vanished here, like the legends had said. He could still feel the timelines, but he couldn't connect to them, as if they were out of reach somehow. It felt as if he was suffocating slowly. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, but it didn't change how he felt. If this planet's technology didn't give him a chance to get Rose back, he'd be initiating the dematerialisation sequence this second.

He took a deep breath and adjusted his leather jacket, then turned back to his companions who were still standing in the doorframe of his ship. "You lot coming? We don't have all day." He still had the nagging feeling that he shouldn't be here, or at least that they should leave the planet as soon as possible.

"Relax, Doc. Time machine, remember? What about some sightseeing? On a planet you don't already know everything about before we've even landed." Jack grinned. "Besides, how long have you been separated from Rose? A few hours more won't kill you."

"Jack…" His voice was low and threatening, but before he could say more he was interrupted by Donna.

"Do you think they've got a market?" she asked, shoving Jack out the doorway so she could leave the ship, whose doors closed behind her immediately.

The Doctor could almost hear crossbars falling in place, securing the doors. Apparently his ship was still annoyed, and he doubted that would change anytime soon. They'd be lucky if she let them in again.

"Donna, you went shopping in Cardiff. Don't you think that should last for a while?"

"That's the point, Doctor. I had to go shopping in _Cardiff_. It's not exactly Rome or Paris!"

He could feel a slight headache building behind his eyes and sighed. When exactly had his life become an intergalactic shopping tour? Even if he hadn't minded shopping with Rose. Not much, anyway. But spending more time here than absolutely necessary was bound to drive him crazy. He could barely suppress the urge to leave this planet immediately. "Tell you what, you and Jack go shopping and I find out more about that dimension crossing technology. Should save us some time."

He stomped off without another word, his hands buried deep in his jacket. As soon as he left the alley and entered the street, he could feel the blazing sun glaring down on him. In the alley, the shadows of the surrounding buildings had protected them, but here the temperature already was reaching a level that would soon become uncomfortable for his companions, even if it was still early in the morning. Oh well, this was supposed to be a highly evolved planet. They'd have air-conditioned shopping centres.

Humans! If the universe didn't revolve around them, they became like a three-year old who'd lost his favourite teddy and threw a temper tantrum. He shook his head. This planet was grating on his nerves, and his headache seemed to be getting stronger. He knew he was being unfair, but he couldn't help it. Everything felt just _wrong_, more wrong than Jack ever had. As much as he tried, he just couldn't see the timelines properly, and that was supposed to be impossible. No wonder the Time Lords had declared this planet off limits.

The Doctor hadn't exactly paid attention to the direction in which he was going, but after a while he realised that he was definitely not approaching the city centre. Industrial areas looked the same in every part of the universe, slightly run down even if they were brand new, but the one he'd found himself in was more than a little run down. Factory buildings with broken windows, rusty company signs and fences, road holes; everything gave the impression that it had been left a few decades ago. He rubbed his forehead. On every other planet he'd have been able to tell how old the surrounding buildings were, how long they'd been in use, and when they'd been deserted. Not that he normally cared, but he could find out if he wanted. On this planet all he could see was a group of buildings sitting, truncated, in only three dimensions, temporally incomplete.

But even if the industrial area looked deserted, it had something that passed for a public information terminal on Xeriax. The column was rusty, and the screen had a large crack, but the monitor on the column slowly flickered to life when the Doctor touched the keyboard. A few minutes later he had a basic overview of the planet's history, the current developments in the commodities market, and the latest political manoeuvres of the governing party. What he didn't have was a clue where to look for the dimension-crossing technology. Whenever he looked up a terminus related to parallel worlds, he came up with literally nothing. It looked like the data banks had been wiped, because _nothing_ was next to impossible. He'd never come across a culture at a certain evolutionary level that hadn't come up with a couple of science fiction stories about alternate universes. Apart from maybe the Cybermen, who lacked the imagination, and the Sontarans, who had bred the interest in stories out of their genetic code ages ago.

But then it was also impossible to wipe a database without leaving traces. And if he found those he'd find the people responsible for deleting the data, and he was fairly certain that they'd lead him to the technology he was looking for. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the information terminal and began to hack.

~o~o~o~

"Stubborn alien git!" Donna glared at the Doctor's retreating back.

Jack changed a setting on his Vortex manipulator and narrowed his eyes. "He'll calm down eventually. I guess this planet is grating on his nerves." He showed her the screen of his manipulator. "See?"

She looked at the tiny monitor and turned her glare at Jack. "What exactly should I see on a black screen, _Captain_?"

"That's exactly the point, Donna, it shouldn't be black. On any other planet you would see a simplified illustration of the Time Vortex, but here we don't."

"And what does that mean?"

"For the Doctor, it means that he can't feel Time like he usually does, as if he was blind and deaf at the same time," Jack explained. "For us, nothing in particular."

Unfortunately that wasn't the entire truth. Even if the TARDIS had repaired his Vortex manipulator, without a reading he wasn't able to make a time jump. Jack just hoped that didn't apply to the TARDIS as well, because then they'd be stuck here. And he had the dim feeling that this wasn't exactly one of the universe's most interesting spots.

He put up a grin that was only partly faked and held out his arm to Donna. "Care to explore the planet for a while?"

When they reached the street they quickly discovered that the Doctor seemed to have vanished. Jack shrugged. "City centre is that way." He pointed.

"Don't you think we should look for the Doctor?"

"There's no need. Knowing the Doctor, he'll find us eventually. Besides, I can imagine better ways to spend my time than dragging along a Time Lord in that sort of mood." He grinned at Donna and offered her his arm. "Shopping?"

* * *

><p>AN: Reviews can be a source of inspiration. Just saying.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Chapter Sixteen**

The shopping centre was surprisingly empty. So was the entire city, now Jack came to think of it. There had been only a few native Xerians and humanoids from other planets on the streets, and even less non-humanoid species. According to the information terminal he had consulted earlier, Xeriax had trade agreements with several other planets in this quadrant. The city they were currently visiting was one of the largest on the planet, and served as a large cultural and governmental centre. According to the posters he had seen outside, a few hundred thousand tourists were expected to visit the opening of the cultural festival that would start tomorrow, but he had only seen a few dozen people outside. Something was going on here. He didn't know what it was, but he intended to find out.

"What do you think about an early lunch, Donna?" he asked when he discovered a small café that was completely deserted, save for the barman and two waiters. One of them was Terraxian, and the fact that his skin was tinged greenish-blue gave away that he was afraid of something. The other waiter just looked as if he was to bolt any second.

"I'm not really hungry, but I would kill for something to drink," she gave back, wiping her forehead with a tissue. "I don't think the air conditioning is working. It's almost as hot inside as it is outside."

It _was_ warm in the shopping centre, but Jack had always thought that some shops on 21th century Earth overdid it with the air conditioning. He really didn't like to go shopping in a freezer. "At least we won't have the feeling of running into a solid wall of heat when we leave the building," he said. "What do you think about the café over there?"

"Looks good to me."

They ordered, and after a few minutes the waiter returned with their beverages. Jack waited patiently until Donna had finished about half of her drink, then he asked the question that had been nagging him since Cardiff.

"I've been meaning to ask you. You had a run-in with Daleks?"

Donna avoided his eyes and adjusted her glass of juice on the drip mat, but nodded eventually.

Judging from her reaction it had been pretty bad, and knowing the Doctor, Jack suspected he afterwards had avoided the topic altogether. Donna really looked as if she needed someone to talk to.

"What happened?"

She took a sip of her drink and placed the glass carefully on the table, then she looked at him again. "I don't know why, but one moment we were standing in the galley and he was telling me we were going to Cardiff, the next something hit us and the TARDIS went out of control."

"Something hit you? In the Time Vortex? That's supposed to be impossible!"

Donna laughed bitterly. "That's what he said. And then the TARDIS crash-landed us on the Dalek homeworld. We needed something to fix her, but she couldn't get us anywhere near. On our way back I got captured. All I did was walk around a rock nose because I'd heard something."

"And what did the Doctor do?"

"I don't know. All I know is that I spent a week imprisoned in a slave camp where they used children as mine workers and in the process starved them to death. He finally showed up while one of the humanoids working for the Daleks was torturing me."

"Let me guess. He went all Oncoming Storm on them? You know, this thing he does. 'This ends. Here and now,'" Jack said in his best imitation of a Northern accent. "And afterwards the baddies hide in dark caves or under the nearest table and hope he lets them live."

Donna smiled briefly at his imitation of a Mancunian accent, but quickly became serious again. "We got the slaves out, and then he told me that he was going to kill each and every Dalek in creation and send the planet back into the Middle Age." She gulped. "He was… He didn't care that he would kill not only the Daleks, but eventually also those people we had just freed. I'd never seen anyone so full of hatred before…" She trailed off.

Jack nodded. "He was like that when the Daleks took Rose from him for the first time… I've never been so afraid of someone in my life." He shuddered at the memory of the look on the Doctor's face when they'd found out that the Daleks were behind the Game Station.

"I… I told him I wouldn't let him, that it was wrong, but he only gave me this look… You know, the one that makes you think that you're nothing more than an insect in his eyes." Donna adjusted her glass on the drip mat once more, then looked back at Jack. "He said he was going to change history, and I don't even know why, but I told him I'd let him do it if he could tell me that Rose would agree. The look on his face when I brought her up…" She shuddered. "I was certain he'd kill me. But then he stopped. I still don't know why, but he stopped."

Jack took her hand. "You did what you had to do, Donna, what was right. Rose did the same for him. He doesn't think clearly whenever it comes to Daleks, and then he needs someone who makes him see reason. Ever since I met him in 1941 I've thought one of the reasons he keeps us around is that we're supposed to stop him if necessary. I don't think we've already seen what being a Time Lord really means, and to be honest, I hope I'll never find out." He paused, then smiled at her. "And I bet he didn't even apologise."

She smiled back, albeit a bit shakily. "Of course not! I was planning on guilt-tripping him into a visit to a spa planet, but then we ended up in Cardiff!"

"Cardiff is not _that_ bad!"

They bantered back and forth until they had finished their drinks, and Jack signalled for the bill.

When the Terraxian waiter returned with it, Jack asked him, "I would have thought it was more crowded today, what with the festival beginning tomorrow."

The waiter stared at him in astonishment, his skin suddenly sporting yellow dots, even if the underlying colouring of fear didn't change. "Where are you from that you don't know the festival has been cancelled?"

"Oh, we've been travelling without access to the networks and have only returned today," Jack replied, waving his hand dismissively. "So what happened?"

"You must be the only persons on the entire planet who don't know. And they force us to work until three hours before shutdown."

"Know what? What shutdown?" Donna asked.

"A storm is coming," the waiter replied, took his tray, returned to the bar, dropped the tray on the counter and walked out of the little café.

Donna looked at Jack in confusion. "What does he mean, a storm? Something like a tornado?"

"I don't know, but maybe we should find out."

It took them only minutes to find an information terminal, and Jack touched the universally recognised symbol for weather.

A window opened, and a slightly green looking humanoid appeared on the screen. "The Meteorological Service has issued a class seven storm warning for the capital for today at 19 standard hours. The government asks everyone to leave the city, and where not possible, to seek shelter. The Meteorological Service will open their bunkers today at 12 standard hours." It was almost imperceptible, but his voice was shaking slightly.

19 standard hours was less than five hours away. Suddenly Jack Harkness, former time agent, former con-man, immortal, and currently leader of Torchwood Three was very, very scared.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor looked up from the monitor of the information portal and rubbed his forehead in frustration. His headache was getting worse, and he was getting nowhere with the information he was looking for. Whoever had purged the database had been extremely clever and covered their tracks. He was fairly certain that the government was involved in this, since an outside job would have left traces no matter what. Something was going on here, and he intended to find out.

He wondered briefly if he should go back to the TARDIS and let her scan for the technology he was looking for, but he was fairly certain that she was still furious with him and wouldn't let him in. With a sigh he turned back to the information portal.

Five minutes later he had just discovered something that looked like it might actually give him an idea of the whereabouts of whoever had cleansed the database, when he heard a hover car stopping behind him.

"Sir, please step away from the information terminal and raise your hands, so we can see them," a female voice said.

The Doctor silently cursed himself. He must have triggered an alarm in the system, maybe even before he had started hacking, just by using the search engine. He turned around and faced the humanoid female who had addressed him. Two uniformed Xerians were standing behind a hover car, training weapons at him, while the woman approached him, an official looking document in her hands.

"Sir, you are arrested under section 63/45 of the Restricted Information Policy Act. You will be taken into custody until the prosecutor decides whether you will be charged with a crime or not. If you put up resistance, the officers behind me will make use of their weapons."

The Doctor sighed. Was it really too much to ask for one trip where everything went to plan? Land, find whatever spare part or information he was looking for, dematerialise. But no, by landing on Xeriax he had not only pissed off his TARDIS, he also had acquired a killer headache, got himself arrested, and still had no idea where to look for the information he needed. He slowly raised his hands.

A short trip in the hover car later, he found himself sitting on a narrow bed in a small prison cell in a building that according to the signs belong to Xeriax's meteorological service, which in and of itself made no sense whatsoever. But then, the entire planet didn't. No wonder the Time Lords had declared it off-limits. His inability to perceive Time like he should was grating on his nerves, and the slight headache he had been developing as soon as he had set foot on the planet was slowly reaching dimensions where it would be measurable it on the Richter scale. He rubbed his forehead in frustration. Maybe the TARDIS had had a point in refusing to bring them here.

In a probably futile attempt to distract himself from the headache that just wouldn't leave him alone, he started to summarize what he knew. Point: Xeriax had been declared off-limits by the Time Lords because Time behaved strange here. Point: He remembered that Xeriax was known for its dimension-crossing technology. Point: There had been absolutely no evidence related to dimension-crossing technology in the databases, which screamed government at him. Point: He was in a prison that belonged to the meteorological service. Point: The meteorological service was part of the government.

Which brought him to the conclusion that this prison was most likely the place where he ought to be. The Doctor made himself comfortable on the bed, crossed his long legs and decided to wait for the things that would happen eventually while trying to ignore the headache that was getting worse by the second. Especially since staging a break out was much easier when he wasn't lacking his leather jacket and the sonic.

Some time passed, but to his utter dismay he couldn't tell exactly how long it had been since the guards had dropped him unceremoniously here. This planet was driving him crazy, slowly, but steadily. Not being able to perceive Time like usual was bad enough, but now the planet was starting to wreak havoc with his time sense. As much as he loathed admitting it, the TARDIS had been right about Xeriax. Now she would be insufferably smug for weeks.

~o~o~o~

Jack's shoulders slumped in despair. Ages ago, when the three of them had visited Cardiff for the first time, he'd programmed the number of the Doctor's mobile into his vortex manipulator, but the number hadn't worked ever since the Game Station. He hadn't even known if the Doctor still had the mobile and had purposefully ignored his calls after Satellite Five or if the device had been destroyed, but this time he had really hoped for an answer, especially since it was possible that the Doctor didn't even know what was coming.

"And what do we do now?" Donna asked.

"Back to the TARDIS. She's probably the safest place in the entire town."

"Why? I mean, even if she's bigger on the inside, the outside is nothing more than wood."

Jack shook his head. "The outside may _look_ like wood, but it's anything but, and the inside is in another dimension. Otherwise the whole concept wouldn't work. Whatever happens here, it won't affect us if we are inside." Apparently Donna hadn't got the infamous 'the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan' speech yet.

"But what about the people in the city?"

"Donna, they've got bunkers. They will be safe inside." He hoped. Remembering the slight tremble in the voice of the news anchorman, he wasn't so sure.

They were halfway to the TARDIS, when suddenly a little boy barrelled headfirst into Donna. She stumbled, and Jack could only just stop her from falling.

The boy had hit the ground, but he already straightened himself, mumbled a quick "Sorry" and was about to bolt, when Jack caught his wrist.

"Do you always run across the streets like a horde of wild…?" One look into the boy's face, and Jack swallowed the end of his sentence. "What's wrong?" he asked instead, releasing him.

"I have to find Sergos. He has promised to help me with my mum. I can't get her to the bunker on my own. She's got a broken leg."

Jack sighed. "So… What's your name?"

"Artor."

"So, Artor, where do you live?"

It took them ten minutes to get to Artor's flat. His mum, who greeted them from her bed, was unable to walk more than a few steps, and on seeing their worn-down furniture Jack quickly buried his hope to find an anti-grav unit. One of those would have cost a lot more than the family could have afforded. So Jack improvised a transport frame that would allow him to carry her to the bunker, while Donna collected her medicine and Artor grabbed a few clothes and his favourite toy.

"I can't thank you enough for doing this!" Artor's mum, Seri, said when Jack told her that they were ready to go. "Most people would have ignored my son."

Donna smiled at her. "Artor was very brave, going after someone who could help him. It just happened that we were much nearer to your flat than whoever he was looking for."

Seri nodded. "Sergos. He is my brother-in-law. My husband died in an accident last year, and Sergos has been helping us whenever we needed someone. But he has his own family to look after."

Ten minutes later, Jack held up the finished transport device. "Nothing fancy, but it'll get you to the bunker."

It took them twenty minutes to reach their destination, through almost deserted streets. They saw several people going the same way, while others were heading in the opposite direction, mostly elderly Xerians. Jack frowned at the sight. Something was going on here, and he had the dim feeling he wouldn't like it.

After half an hour of queuing in front of the entrance to the bunker, he discovered that he had been right. He didn't like it one bit.

"Identification," a male Xerian with official looking insignia sneered at their little group, like he had at every group before.

Jack groaned inwardly, and produced his psychic paper.

"Harkness," the official read. "That your wife?" He looked at Donna.

"My sister," he lied smoothly. Thankfully he had centuries of experience of keeping his face straight, because Donna stomped on his feet. Hard.

"And the others?"

Seri fumbled in her pocket and presented hers and Artor's identification.

The official looked at them closely, then said, "You may enter. Except her." He pointed at Seri.

"And who are you to decide that?" Donna asked. Her tone betrayed her frustration with the whole situation.

"I'm the local evacuation officer. I'm responsible for the people in this district getting to safety in case of…," he boomed, but Donna interrupted him before he could finish his sentence.

"Then I'd suggest you reconsider your decision, or you won't be the local evacuation officer much longer."

Jack grinned inwardly. He could see why the Doctor had chosen Donna as a companion. She was stubborn, had an uncanny sense for what was right, and was not afraid to call even the Doctor on his behaviour. A bureaucrat on a backwater planet would never stand a chance.

The evacuation officer looked at Jack, apparently hoping for help. "But we can't let them all in. We don't have the capacity."

Even if it was true, that still wasn't a reason to stop letting people into the bunker while there still _was_ space left. One look at Donna told Jack, that she was thinking the same, and about to make known her opinion with a tirade, possibly followed by slapping the bureaucrat into another dimension. He gave the official a hard look. "Mate, you've got no idea what you brought upon you with that sentence. So, to stop my sister here from exploding into your face, I suggest you answer us a few questions. One: How long until the storm hits?"

The other man consulted his data pad. "Two and a half standard hours."

"And how long is it going to last?

"They're estimating six hours, seven at the most."

"Let's say you close off the bunker in one and a half hours and keep it locked an additional two hours after the storm is supposed to die down, that would mean we'd need air for nine hours. Now, how many people can you let in and still have enough air for that long?"

A quick calculation on the data pad was followed by, "Six thousand."

"And how many are in here?"

"Four thousand three hundred and eighty-six," the evacuation officer told him after another glance at his data pad.

"Then I suggest you let everyone in, until you've reached six thousand," Donna threw in, with an expression that could have scared a statue to death.

The man in front of her paled considerably.

~o~o~o~

"Do you want to go back to the TARDIS, Donna?" Jack asked, after they had spent more than an hour helping organise the people already in the bunker, making room for more refugees. "She'd probably be safer than this bunker."

Donna shook her head. "They won't say it, but they need every hand they can get. One of the other evacuation officials told me that most of their volunteers left the city when the meteorological service gave out their first warning. Besides, if we leave the guy at the entrance might return to his 'you're only getting in here if I like your nose' attitude."

Jack grinned at that. "Valid argument."

For the next few hours they helped the evacuation staff keeping up some semblance of order. Donna was about to hand a child back to her mother when the buzz of voices around her was interrupted by a loud, rumbling noise. The bulkhead was closing, shutting them off from the outside.

She looked up to meet Jack's eyes. Now they were stuck.

~o~o~o~


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Chapter Seventeen**

Roughly three hours after the door to his cell had closed behind the Doctor it opened again. At least he _thought_ that it was three hours. On every other planet he would have been able to narrow it down to the nanosecond, but here all he could do was make a guess. This planet had confused his time sense thoroughly, and being stuck in a windowless cell didn't exactly help the situation. On top of that, his headache had gotten worse as well.

He turned his attention to the people who had entered his cell, two guards and a man in a white lab coat. He groaned inwardly and hoped that he hadn't accidently run into the cliché evil scientist trying to take over the world. Again.

But instead of boring him to death with the sort of monologue that had become pretty much standard in that kind of situation, the man in the lab coat got to the point immediately.

"I am Doctor Gombar, the leader of the Meteorological Service and as such I am obliged to interrogate you within the first four hours of your arrest. Since we are expecting a huge storm to hit, I won't have time for this during the next few hours, so let's get it over with." He looked around in the cell, noting the lack of another sitting accommodation beyond the bed and decided, "Let's move this to conference room three."

He took a step back, indicating for the Doctor to follow him.

The Doctor made no move to get up, so the scientist gestured at the guards. "I can have them drag you there, or you can come along willingly. I'd prefer you'd come, but I can live with whatever you decide."

Groaning inwardly at the headache that decided to get worse upon movement, the Doctor followed the scientist out of his cell, curious where this would lead. He still wanted answers to his questions, and he had the feeling that the scientist was the person who could give them. The guards fell into place slightly behind, but made no move to restrain him.

They never made it to the conference room. On their way through the building, the small group came across a large control room, with windows to the corridor that provided an excellent view of what was going on inside. The Doctor turned his head, saw what was displayed on the main screen on the opposite wall and stopped dead in his tracks. The guards ran into him, but he didn't care. He just stood there, in the middle of the corridor, oblivious to his surroundings, his attention captured entirely by the data on the screen. He hadn't seen figures like these for years, and truth be told, he wouldn't have minded to never see them again.

"This is no ordinary storm you're expecting," he stated, staring at the display.

"No. It's a…"

"Time Storm," he finished the sentence.

"How do you know that?"

"Does it matter? It's headed directly at this city." Heedless of the guards that eyed him warily, he opened the door next to the row of windows and walked into the room. He stopped right in front of the large screen and took in the display, trying to figure out the meaning of the different readings.

He rubbed his forehead in a predictably futile attempt to ease his headache, then turned his attention back to the main screen. Finally the meaning of the figures on the monitor sank in, and a wave of sheer horror swept over him. Not even during the Time War, when they had used Time Storms as a means of last resort, had he ever seen a storm of this strength, and by the looks of it Donna and Jack would be right in the middle of things. Unless they made it back to the TARDIS in time the storm would kill them, and even in the TARDIS their chances of survival were slim. Even a dimensionally transcendent time ship would suffer from a Time Storm, despite the shielding he had reinforced after Skaro.

This was his fault. He had practically abducted them and brought them here. And now they'd probably die because of him.

He whirled around and turned to the scientist, not caring that his voice might betray his fear. "A Time Storm of this scale will destroy more than just your capital. You can count yourself lucky if it doesn't rip your planet apart."

"I know," the man said calmly. "But there isn't anything we can do. All we could do was warn the civilians, evacuate the city and get as many people as possible into the bunkers. That's what we always do."

The Doctor closed his eyes as he realised something. "That's what happened to the industrial complex where your people arrested me." He rubbed his forehead again. The headache really wasn't helping. It was already beginning to slow down his thought process and he had a dim feeling that it was only going to get worse.

Doctor Gombar nodded. "It was hit by a small storm only a few months ago, even if it looks as if it has been abandoned for decades. The storm hit with almost no forewarning. Fortunately we got all the workers out in time."

"They're getting stronger." It wasn't a question.

"They have been for some time." The scientist snorted. "We are called the Meteorological Service, but weather forecasts were never our main purpose. Once upon a time our people used to hop back and forth through the dimensions…"

"How?" the Doctor interrupted, curious where this would lead.

"The reality converter," Doctor Gombar said. "People would spend their mornings at home, pop over to Parallel/Alpha49 for lunch, go shopping on Parallel/Rho27 and listen to a concert on Parallel/Gamma68 in the evening. Whenever someone wanted to cross into another dimension, he would use the reality converter, capture the force of a Time Storm and create a portal. At least that's the story they told us. By the time we signed up with this agency, that wasn't true anymore, because it had already become dangerous."

"What changed?"

"We don't know. The Meteorological Service noticed the Time Storms getting stronger. Safely holding up a portal long enough for someone to pass through became almost impossible. The reality converter couldn't hold the force of the storms in check, and the power they exuded began to rip apart the fabric of time and space. To save the planet, the Meteorological Service declared crossing into other dimensions illegal, banned the technology, and after a few decades the knowledge that we had ever been able to travel to other dimensions began to fade. Now we try to keep it that way, and we monitor our networks to suppress every idea going in that direction. But that didn't stop the Time Storms. They are still building, and we don't know how to stop them."

Gombar sighed. "We figured out early on that the storms only affect people when they are out in the open, unprotected. So we issue storm warnings whenever a Time Storm is going to hit. Unfortunately there are no caves or tunnels in this area, and we can't build any because the ground is nearly impenetrable here. So we began to build bunkers on the surface, but there are not nearly enough of them. We tell the general public that the bunkers provide protection, but in the end they are nothing more than reinforced steel under a massive layer of concrete. Expose them to a Time Storm long enough, and they will crumble under the sheer force of Time."

And kill the people who had sought shelter inside, the Doctor thought. Then he paused. Something about what Gombar had said was important, more important than information about the bunkers, or the Xerian Meteorological Service trying to control people's knowledge. Then realisation hit. Fabric of time, Gombar had said. As it had before, with the misplaced trader in medieval London, it all came down to the shock waves.

"Oh yes, that's it!" He grinned manically. "The Time Storms got stronger at the time the full force of the shock waves hit Xeriax. Until then you had only experienced smaller disturbances, and apparently discovered the occasional piece of flotsam you weren't supposed to have, like the technology for your reality converters."

"What are you talking about?" the scientist asked, apparently confused by the Doctor's sudden change of demeanour. "What shock wave?"

"Not only the reality converters, your entire equipment is based on technology that was invented by my people," the Doctor said, carefully avoiding the term 'Time Lord'. "There was a war, and we lost. And the cataclysm that ended it sent shock waves through the entire universe, carrying along debris from the war like flotsam, including some of the dimension-crossing equipment your people used. Eventually the equipment stranded on Xeriax, you found out what it could do and pressed the proverbial red button."

"What red button?"

"What are you, a parrot?" the Doctor asked impatiently, still not entirely certain where his reasoning would lead. Everything came down to the end of the Time War and the cracks in reality. Without them, none of this would have happened. Not the Xerians crossing dimensions, not the Cybermen, not Canary Wharf, not Rose being imprisoned in another universe – and ultimately all of this was his fault. "As a result of the war, or rather its end, there are tiny fractures in the fabric of reality, which enabled you to travel between dimensions using the alien technology that washed up here on the shock waves. Without those cracks you'd have been like a prisoner trying to break out of his cell by throwing cotton pads at the wall. If you had left the fissures alone, they would have healed eventually, like they did on other planets that were hit by the shock waves. But whenever you used the reality converters to cross into another dimension, you widened them, bit by bit, until they merged into a gaping wound in the fabric of reality.

"The first fissures into the Void between dimensions were the reason the first storm built. And when you started to gather their force to visit parallel worlds, this opened even more cracks, which fuelled the storms. And every storm ripped the fabric of reality further apart."

The Doctor paused and waited for the moment when realisation would hit. He didn't have to wait for long.

"This is our fault," Doctor Gombar said. "We set all of this in motion, and now it is going to destroy us, our people, our entire planet."

The Doctor was silent. Ultimately, it was he who stood at the beginning of this chain reaction, but he had never imagined that something remotely like this would happen.

"Is there something we can do to stop this?" the scientist asked.

Unfortunately the figures on the monitor told the Doctor that they had no such luck. "At this point, the system is self-sustaining." And eventually it would be self-destructing, but from the look at Gombar's face the scientist knew what he was not saying. "But there is something _I_ can do."

"You? Why you?"

"Because I'm the only one who can."

~o~o~o~

The Doctor stood like a statue in the middle of a large plaza, waiting for the Time Storm to hit. In one of the corners of the square the Meteorological Service had built a small surveillance post, but otherwise the plaza was completely empty. He didn't need help anyway. He was the only person on the entire planet who might have an infinitesimal chance of stopping this storm, and every form of so-called assistance would have been nothing more than a distraction. The plaza around him was more or less optional, too. He could have done this basically anywhere, but open space made it easier. Less distractions and less collateral damage. If he survived this, that was. Otherwise collateral damage wouldn't matter anyway.

He would never admit it to anyone, but he was scared to death. He hadn't attempted anything remotely like this since the Time War, and even then he wouldn't even have considered doing it without at least three or four Time Lords to anchor him. He _had_ conjured up a Time Storm on his own during one of the last battles before the end, true, but at the time he had been beyond caring what would happen to him and everyone else who got caught up in it, because slim as it was, it had been the only chance left to change the outcome of the battle. He had known that he was grasping at straws, already knowing what he would have to do to end the war, but he had had to try every other possible solution first. And had failed.

This time, failing would mean condemning Jack, Donna and everyone else in this city, because the bunkers wouldn't be able to withstand a storm of this strength. And losing Jack and Donna just wasn't going to happen. Not when he was the reason that they were here in the first place. He would contain this Time Storm and while he was at it, repair the fissures in the fabric of reality, or else one day the planet would be ripped apart. Maybe not this time, maybe not the next, but if the Time Storms didn't cease it would happen eventually. So he had to do something about it, even if it wasn't going to be easy.

Which might have been the understatement of the century, he added mentally. Compared to what he was about to do, bringing himself in tune with the ventilator on Platform One had been children's play. He had told Jack that he could control Time to a certain extent, but trying to contain a Time Storm was much more difficult, especially without anyone who could anchor him and without being able to feel Time like he should. If he wasn't careful, if he made a wrong decision, not only would this planet die, he would most likely condemn the entire star system.

"No time like the present," he said to no one in particular, then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the feel of the air around him and on what he _should_ be feeling: the planet turning under his feet, falling through space, hurtling around its star, the star system moving through its galaxy, the universe expanding.

For a seemingly endless moment there was absolutely nothing, but suddenly he felt as if he had broken through a glass barrier. Time was back, and once again he could see timelines swirling around him. He searched them carefully, and eventually found the dark, tangled mass that represented the Time Storm.

Tentatively he reached out and touched a timeline with his mind, but as soon as he made contact he knew he had made a mistake. The Storm was a lot stronger than he had thought, and way too powerful to be controlled by him alone.

He began fighting it nonetheless, knowing what was at stake. He tried to draw the force of the storm upon itself, folding the mass of timelines, and for a few moments he thought that he was gaining on the storm. But the Time Storm was beginning to draw him in, an irresistible force threatening to crush him. Before he even realised what was happening, he was in far too deep, the maelstrom of time pulling him in. And it was already too late to draw back. This would be the end.

For a moment his thoughts began to wander, but with an enormous effort of will he forced every unrelated thought to the back of his mind, in a desperate attempt to regain control over the storm. But still the force of Time was tugging on him, distracting him, trying to shake him off, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to hold it back for much longer, much less contain it.

For a nanosecond he asked himself what would happen if he gave up, but he dismissed the thought immediately. What was threatening this planet was ultimately his fault, and he would do everything in his power to stop it, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

Suddenly he became aware of an almost imperceptible attempt at telepathic contact, and he reached out for the thin mental tendrils. Grasping one of them like a lifeline, he felt every sensation heighten. The TARDIS was lending him power, guiding him, anchoring him.

He didn't dare to divide his attention to tell how long he fought the storm. Slowly he gained on it, until he felt it begin to die down. Then one of the buildings on his left began to crumble, no longer able to withstand the force of Time. Windows shattered, and a shower of debris hit him. Brief as it was, it was enough to break his concentration.

Then a time eddy struck him, and he lost all the progress he had already made. Once again the storm began to draw him in. He clung to his connection to the TARDIS, but this time even the additional power of the time ship seemed to be not enough to save him.

He felt his anguish being echoed by the TARDIS, followed by a cry for help that reverberated throughout reality, then the maelstrom of time began to swallow him.

_Rose…_

~o~o~o~

_Rose…_

Rose Tyler looked up from the schematics she had been studying, almost certain that she had heard something, when suddenly a feeling of distress washed over her and she gasped.

Jake, who had been occupying one of the four other desks in the room, turned his attention to her. "Rose? Something wrong?"

She gulped, gripping the table to keep her hands from shaking, but shook her head. "I'm fine."

Jake raised his eyebrows. "You're white as a sheet."

"I'm _fine_," Rose repeated, not entirely sure that she convinced him, and not really caring, because at this moment another wave of distress hit her.

"No, you're not." Jake got up from his chair and came over to her desk. "What's wrong?"

"I dunno. Maybe I've eaten something wrong," she said, knowing that that was not the case.

"Rose, the food in the cafeteria is bad, but not that bad. I know an old ready room on sublevel B that hasn't been in use since the war against the Cybers. You can collapse on one of the beds, and then you can tell me what exactly is going on here."

Rose opened her mouth to tell him that his concern was unnecessary but shut it again and nodded instead. She really wasn't feeling all that well. Fortunately they had been alone in the room, because she wasn't sure how she would have reacted to anyone but Jake or Mickey seeing her like that.

They had barely reached Jake's secret ready room, when a third wave of distress shook her, stronger this time, and she suddenly felt as if an incoming tide was trying to draw her under. She sat down on one of the beds, gasping for air, but the feeling didn't subside.

Rose shook her head in an attempt to shake off the sensation and tried to concentrate. Something was very familiar about the emotion she was receiving, even though she couldn't quite place it. But she was fairly certain that whatever was going on here was somehow related to her past. During their first meeting between dimensions the Doctor had said that she might be telepathic now, and what she was experiencing felt a bit like when the TARDIS had tried to communicate with her after the Gamestation. Just the feeling of distress was new.

Eventually the wave receded, and she became aware of someone calling her name.

"Rose?" Jake asked, sounding clearly worried.

She looked up. "I think something is wrong. With the Doctor or the TARDIS, or maybe both of them." She had barely finished her sentence when another wave of distress hit her.

"How do you know that?"

Rose ignored him, because once more the feeling of being drawn underwater tried to overwhelm her. But this time she was prepared and slowly she began to follow the feeling of distress back to its source, shutting everything else out. She acted by pure instinct, descending deeper and deeper into her mind, until she reached a small golden knot. For an indeterminable amount of time she simply regarded it, then reached out and touched it. And remembered.

_I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me._

She had forged a bond with the TARDIS, and now something was wrong with the ship. The TARDIS was screaming across the Void, begging for help.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor felt himself being torn apart by the storm, bit by bit, fibre by fibre. He tried to fight it, but he was not strong enough. This was his fault, all of this. Nothing would have happened if he hadn't used the Moment. This was his punishment, and it was only fair that his life ended like this. It should have ended long ago. The only thing that he regretted was that he couldn't save the people on this planet, and that Donna and Jack would have to die because of him. And Rose…

Ever since Krop Tor, when he had finally acted on his feelings, against his better judgement, he had felt that he was living on borrowed time. He had had another chance to end it on Darlig Ulv Stranden, and he had used it to tie her even more tightly to him. Now fate had finally found him, and he didn't even get the chance to say goodbye. She would never know what had happened to him.

His thoughts were interrupted when he suddenly perceived a light in the middle of the Storm, unfazed by the chaos surrounding it. Slowly but steadily it came nearer, and eventually it engulfed him completely, even if it didn't touch him.

For some time he just stared at the phenomenon in wonder, then reached out with his mind and touched it.

_I want you safe. My Doctor…_

"Rose?" he asked disbelievingly. Somehow she had known that something was wrong, and now she was trying to save him. Even if that might mean her end.

What he felt from the entity surrounding him was neither confirmation nor denial.

_I take the words. I scatter them…_

"Bad Wolf…" the Doctor muttered in astonishment.

The light around him brightened, warmth surrounded him, and he could almost imagine Rose standing next to him, her tongue poking through her teeth as she smiled at him and reached for his hand.

_A message to lead myself here._

For the first time in what seemed more than the few hours since he had set foot on Xeriax his head was clear, the headache gone. And finally he understood.

Even before his concentration had been broken, the TARDIS had realised that she alone was not strong enough to anchor him. She had done what she normally only did when they were safely in the Vortex and he was asleep: She had bridged the Void and established a connection with Rose. Only this time she had called Bad Wolf.

"What have you done?" he asked his ship angrily. "Do you have any idea how dangerous…"

The TARDIS sent him the mental equivalent of an electric shock before he had even finished his sentence, followed by the image of a woman with crossed arms and raised eyebrows that looked a lot like Jackie Tyler. Too much for his liking, if he was honest.

If the Doctor could have glared at the ship, he would have. As things were, he sent her the telepathic equivalent of a stern look. "This could kill Rose, and you know that. I bet she wasn't even asleep when you made contact…"

The golden glowing entity surrounding him effectively ended the telepathic argument between him and his ship with a flash.

_I made my choice a long time ago._

He was about to open his mouth to tell her that he was not worth risking her life, something she would most likely not have accepted as a valid argument anyway, when the TARDIS sent him an image of a clock ticking down to zero.

The TARDIS was right. Time was running out. The Time Storm had almost reached the city, and when it hit, it would only take a short length of time to destroy not only the regular buildings, but also the bunkers in which people had sought shelter.

Again he got the feeling that Rose was reaching for his hand, like she always did before they ran – into danger or away from it. It didn't really matter, but then it never had. All that mattered was her being with him. He smiled briefly and reached out for her, suddenly feeling her warmth permeating him. Then he began to concentrate on the task at hand again.

In the beginning he made very little progress, and he was farther from stemming this Time Storm than he had been when he had begun to fight it for the first time, but at least he was able to push it back far enough that the maelstrom stopped pulling on him. Now he could concentrate on containing the storm once again.

It was only after a few minutes that he realised that fighting the storm had somehow become easier than it had been before. He could anticipate time eddies earlier than he had been able before, which allowed him to either avoid or counteract them, and soon he had reached the point when the time eddy had hit him the first time, when the storm had already been dying down.

_Better with two._

If the golden entity surrounding him had been able to grin at him, he was certain she would have done it. Because she was right.

Together they could do almost anything, and with the Bad Wolf and the TARDIS anchoring him, he could use all his strength to fight the storm, instead of having to split his concentration to keep anchored to the TARDIS.

With renewed effort he began to contain the Time Storm, drawing it on itself until it slowly began to collapse, a process that could best be compared to the formation of a black hole. When the process finally came to a hold, the Doctor held a compact mass of tangled timelines, held together by sheer force of will. Now all that was left was to get rid of it.

For a second he divided his attention between the Time Storm and the Void between dimensions, searching for a fissure, only to realise that Bad Wolf had foreseen his intention. She already had created a stable pathway into the Void, using one of the fractures in the fabric of reality that the storm had created.

The Doctor took the tangled mass that represented the Time Storm and _pushed_. Mentally he guided the remnants of the storm through the pathway, then he began to close the passage. The golden entity representing the Bad Wolf shot towards the Void, and for a second he feared that she would be drawn into it, like Rose would have been in Torchwood Tower if Pete hadn't shown up and saved her.

She didn't. Bad Wolf simply _touched_ the Void, and the tear began to heal, much faster than it would have if he had closed it on his own. The scar glowed for a moment, then it vanished.

Then Bad Wolf returned to him, and together they began to repair the damage to the fabric of reality the Time Storms had done during the last decades, closing the tears one by one. He would concentrate on a fissure, start the task of closing it and then Bad Wolf would accelerate the process.

Eventually they had healed all of the large fissures, leaving only the very small ones, which weren't nearly big enough to fuel another Time Storm and would eventually heal on their own. For a moment Bad Wolf returned to him, and warmth suffused the Doctor. He felt the mental equivalent of a hug, followed by a goodbye, then the entity vanished as fast as it had come.

He released a breath he hadn't even realised he'd been holding, and slowly opened his eyes again. The buildings around him had crumbled to dust, the second row of buildings looked as if they were centuries old, but beneath that the city seemed to be untouched. Even though the Time Storm could have destroyed the entire city, it had hit mainly this part and spared other areas. So far, his plan had worked.

As soon as he saw the scientists from the Meteorological Service leave their tent, he decided that now would be the time to vanish from the scene, especially since the dust in the air would cover his disappearance. It was time to set the second part of his plan into motion.

~o~o~o~

When Rose came back to her senses, Jake's worried face was looming over her. She squinted against the light, the bright lamps in the ready room not doing anything for the murder headache that had settled in her head.

"Rose?"

"Give me a mo'," she croaked, trying to sit up.

"Whoa, slowly!" Jake helped her up and steadied her.

"How long was I out?"

"Three hours. What happened?"

"I don't know." Seeing Jake's sceptical look, she amended, "Well, I've got an idea, but I'm not really sure. Ever since the Gamestation I've had a connection with the TARDIS, and I could _feel_ she needed my help. I think… I became Bad Wolf again."

"But didn't you say that it had almost killed you?"

"The TARDIS would never do anything that could harm me," she said with conviction.

"But…"

"Jake, please… Just trust me." She slowly stood up, her legs still a bit shaky, but keeping her upright. "But please do me a favour: Don't tell anyone."

Jake grinned in understanding. "Yeah, I could do without your mum yelling at me because I didn't stop you."

Rose grinned back. "See?"


End file.
